


double dutch

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Parent Trap Fusion, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: Twelve years have passed since Regina had bitterly divorced her wife and been crowned Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms. Twelve years have passed since Emma had made her getaway and found a new career hunting magical monsters in the Land Without Magic. Twelve years have passed since each woman had adopted an identical little girl from an alternate realm.Now, those two little girls are poised to meet. And they are not going to let anything come between their family and happily ever after, whether their mothers like it (or know it) or not.(Why, yes, thisisa Parent Trap AU!)
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan, Henry Mills & Hope Swan-Mills, swan-mills family - Relationship
Comments: 440
Kudos: 929





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First things first: canon happened without Henry. Henry is in this story, but is a girl. It'll make sense, I promise. 
> 
> We are being spontaneous again, which means that I have no idea how many chapters this will be and only marked down a few major players in the tags, though I will modify as necessary. I expect that this will probably be rated M when I'm done but I don't want to guarantee it before the outline is finished so we shall see? I would love to update twice weekly but for now let's say every Sunday until I have a few more chapters saved up to post. 
> 
> Would love to hear from y'all if you're enjoying! I write because I exist in a world of possibilities where Swan Queen is every one but in a WIP it's truly the audience along for the ride that keeps me going. You're the wind beneath my wings and don't ever forget it!!!

In the end, there had been two children. It had been so inexplicably simple, after all the drama and uncertainty and fear. 

The divorce had been abrupt and bitter, and the one point of contention had been the baby they’d been scheduled to adopt. Emma had dreaded the idea of sharing a child with Regina– with the fury that the child would endure, the conflict of two adults who can hardly speak to each other without ice dripping off of every word. She’d dreaded the idea of adopting a child with  _ instability _ , who doesn’t have the single home she’d always dreamed of as a girl.

But they had committed to adopt the child, even now that their lives have been turned upside down. They war over custody agreements– and  _ oh _ , how they’d warred, even worse than before– and they bring each other to tears, to desperation, to  _ please this baby is all I have please please please _ –

And then, eight months into the birth mother’s pregnancy, there had been the joining of all the realms and, unexpectedly, an identical birth mother in the same dire straits in the universe that Emma had wished into being. (The universe that Regina had crossed into solely to  _ bring her home _ , had crossed time and space to save her, and there’s a pit in her stomach when she thinks about it.) 

It had been so clear. Two identical babies who’d needed a home, two women who no longer shared a home. And Emma and Regina would never have to see each other again. Emma had seen the other infant only once, cradled in Regina’s arms as Emma had cradled her own. Regina had been staring down at her in wonder, had looked at that baby as though she’d been her whole world, and Emma’s heart had finally cracked fully into two.

There is no reason for Emma to long for the other child. They had made no commitments except to stay away, and her own daughter is  _ everything _ , is a child made bright and strong and beautiful. Regina’s Henrietta (they’d fought so hard over the name at the start, and Emma wants to laugh and cry when she thinks about Regina’s indulgent, overly sentimental choice, so intensely  _ Regina _ ) has nothing to do with Emma. 

And still she thinks of her every day, and dreams of her as often as she dreams of Regina, a spike of pain in her chest at the thought of both.

* * *

It’s not that Hope likes the idea of being away. It’s always been just Ma and her, except on the rare occasions when Grandma and Gramps come to visit and spoil her rotten for a few weeks before they head back to the Enchanted Forest. She’s not one of those annoying kids who think that twelve is too old to want to spend time with your mom. And Ma is  _ cool _ . How many kids have moms who get jobs hunting magical beasts and still come home and play video games with them? Ma’s the  _ best _ , and Hope loves spending time with her. 

It’s just that this opportunity is so  _ great _ , and she’d been picked as one of eight kids in the whole realm who are going to get to go. It’s just a two-week realm-hopping program to foster unity between kids of different realms, and she’d written a pretty awesome letter about why she’d wanted to go, awesome enough that even the Storybrooke Government of the Realms had picked her from the pile. 

And Ma reluctantly agrees after she glances over the chaperone list and is satisfied. “Look,” she says. “I know I’ve taught you plenty about fighting. But I don’t want you going out there and looking for trouble, okay? You have to stick with the group. A lot of monsters out there looking for delicious adolescents–” She snatches Hope’s shirt and pulls her to her, and Hope laughs and scrambles to get away before they settle down together. 

“I mean it,” Ma says, her arm curled around Hope’s shoulders. “I don’t want to keep you locked up for the rest of your life. I want you to see the world. But the world isn’t all good, and there are people out there who can really screw you up. You know that, right?” 

“Yeah.” Hope knows that Ma has been through a lot. Ma talks about it sometimes, living on the streets and moving from home to home and never really belonging anywhere. And then the  _ Other Times _ , the times with Hope’s other mom, which she rarely talks about at all.

_ Not technically your mom,  _ Ma has said, staring down at a picture she keeps of Her.  _ She just– could have been, if things had gone differently _ . Hope still thinks of her as  _ Mom _ anyway, the mysterious woman who had been married to Ma before it had all gone downhill. Ma gets melancholy sometimes, and Hope knows that it’s about Her. She insists that it had been a bad relationship, that it’s one she doesn’t regret ending, but Hope has heard her talking to Grandma sometimes and it has sounded like something else entirely.

_ How are they?  _ Ma whispers, and Grandma says,  _ You know how bad you get when I answer that _ , and then she cradles Ma in her arms like Ma is the kid that Grandma had never gotten to raise and Ma trembles with silent sobs.

_ They _ , she always says, and Hope resents Her just a little for it. She’s not stupid. She knows what must have happened, and why She had hurt Ma so badly. She’s old enough to know about  _ cheating  _ and that people sometimes fall in love with other people, and the woman who might have been Hope’s other mother must have done the unforgivable. 

Still, Hope likes to wonder about Her. Does she ever think about Hope, or does she have a family of her own now? Does she think about Ma? Does she still love Ma? How could anyone give up on Ma? She imagines them together, imagines the shadows that live on Ma’s face being driven away for good, and she knows with all the surety of twelve that it’s the way that things should be.

“I think she would love you very much if she knew you,” is all Ma will say. “My brave, beautiful girl.” She presses kisses to Hope’s forehead that might break a curse in another realm, and the topic is concluded.

When it’s time to pack for her trip, Hope sneaks over to Ma’s bedroom and finds the photo tucked into her nightstand drawer. It’s of a woman in a stunning wedding dress, her eyes bright and a bouquet of purple flowers in her hands as she laughs. She has a kind face, Hope thinks, like someone who loves so much that it transforms her.

Hope tucks it into her bag, right alongside the pictures of Ma and Grandma and Gramps, and she buries them in a pile of shirts and goes off to hunt for her hairbrush.

* * *

The departure point isn’t Storybrooke but a realm-hopping terminal in Boston, which is disappointing. Hope has wanted to see Storybrooke for  _ forever _ . According to Ma, it’s boring– just a bunch of houses and shops and then the huge complex where the Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms, lives and governs– but Hope is pretty sure Ma just doesn’t want to go back there. It’s where she’d lived when she’d been married, and it would probably bring back bad memories.

Ma holds her tightly, and she asks again, “Do you want me to stay until departure time?” 

“It’s okay. None of the other kids have their parents here,” Hope says, rubbing her short-cropped hair self-consciously. There are a few dozen kids sitting in the circle where the chaperones are, and she wants to go to them, not lurk at the edge with her mother. “I’m going to be fine, Ma. I swear.” 

Ma holds her tightly for another minute. “I’m a little afraid you’ll go out there and never want to come back,” she murmurs, and she shakes her head. “You’re going to fall in love with…with all the realms, with the magic, with…” She swallows, and Hope looks up at her in concern. “Maybe we will go to the Enchanted Forest sometime to visit your grandparents,” she says at last. “There’s a whole world out there.” 

“Ma.” Hope wriggles away from her. “Two weeks. That’s it. It’s basically a vacation for you.” 

“I don’t need a vacation from you, kid,” Ma says, and she squeezes Hope one more time before she backs away. “Go. Stay close to Mulan, okay? I love you.”

“Love you!” Hope turns to the group of kids, settling near the chaperone whom Ma had already introduced as Mulan. Soon, she’s ensconced in a conversation with a set of twins from the Enchanted Forest and a girl from Camelot, and she doesn’t notice the hush that has fallen over the group until Gretel says, “Hey, isn’t that Mayor Mills?” 

“Mayor Mills?” Hope echoes. “Like,  _ the _ Mayor Mills?” The queen of the realms prefers to be called Storybrooke’s mayor, and Hope has seen both Disney adaptations of her life, the cartoon and the live-action. Ma says they’re garbage and won’t keep them in the house, but Jade down the block has both of them and a huge poster of the actress who plays Mayor Mills on her wall and Hope had always imagined that Mayor Mills would be…well,  _ taller _ .

She can’t see her from here– she’s turned away as she tends to a well-bundled girl in front of her, but there is something regal in the arch of her back and the way she presses a kiss to the girl’s cheek and strides away. The girl huddles under her coat, walking straight toward the opposite corner of the group, and Hope watches her with interest. “Mayor Mills has a daughter?” 

“Duh,” Gretel says, and she drawls, “Henry Mills, pride of Storybrooke. You’d think she’d be picked on with a name like that, but I guess no one’s starting up with Mayor Mills’s daughter. The magazines all say she’s been learning magic with her aunt in Oz. I guess she came back for this.”

“Seems like this whole thing is rigged then,” Violet says, wrinkling her nose. Henry Mills has already been accosted by a crowd of fans, too many for Hope to get a look at her, and Hope looks away. Ma has always been disdainful of celebrities, and Hope sees her point. It’s not like Henry Mills has  _ done  _ anything to deserve the hoopla. She’s not her mother. 

“Here I thought I was special,” Hope says, and the others laugh with her and fully forget Henrietta Mills.  _ Good _ . Hope can’t wait to get home and tell Ma about the girls she’d met from  _ other realms. _

_ So cool. _

* * *

Henrietta Mills does not want to be on this little unity tour at all, which has led to plenty of tension between her and her mother. For one, she’s  _ busy _ . She’s twelve years old and has already learned more about the realms than most people will learn in a lifetime. She knows that Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms is a democratically elected position and not hereditary, but it’s hard to grow up with a mom like hers and  _ not  _ want to follow in her footsteps. 

She doesn’t have any innate magic, but neither does Aunt Zelena anymore, and that’s what makes her such a good teacher. She learns to mix potions and chant spells, and she’s already been pronounced a  _ formidable opponent  _ by at least three separate assassins who’d tried to kill her. So what if she can’t make fire appear in her hand just by thinking it? She’s good enough that it doesn’t matter.

Mom is exasperated with her drive. “You have nothing to prove, darling,” she reminds her, over and over again. “I am so proud of you. You don’t need to slay dragons to excel.” And, incessantly, “Wouldn’t you rather make some friends your own age?” whenever Henry makes a new contact in Storybrooke. “You’re all alone at home.” 

There is always the shadow that crosses Mom’s face when she thinks about Henry being an only child, and Henry doesn’t understand it. Because, like…Mom  _ loves _ kids. Everyone knows that. She probably could have adopted ten instead of just Henry and she would have spent every waking moment taking care of them. But Mom never had. “You’re enough for me,” she promises, over and over. “You’re all I ever wanted.” 

But if that were true, then she wouldn’t be so sad all the time, like Henry is absolutely not enough. Henry had been adopted right after Mom had gotten divorced, and the divorce had gutted Mom so badly that she’d never really moved on. She still talks about  _ Emma  _ so much that Henry thinks of her as her other mother, sort of, who’d abandoned them both instead of just Mom. 

She kind of hates Emma, whoever she is. She’d googled her once; had searched for  _ Emma  _ and  _ Storybrooke  _ and come up blank. She doesn’t even have a last name to go on, just a few pictures in one of her mother’s enchanted photo frames. Emma is Snow’s and David’s daughter, and they are careful never to talk about her, never to bring her up around Henry or Regina when they’re visiting. Which is probably for the best, because Henry’s learned a particular hex that she’s going to use on Emma if she ever meets her, and Mom is not going to be happy about it. 

_ Anyway _ . This whole stupid unity thing is pointless, but Dorothy and Ruby had suggested that she might approach it like an ambassador instead of a kid. So Henry sweeps around and says, “A pleasure to meet you,” to a pretty girl who’s looking sidelong at her. “I’m Henrietta Mills.” 

“Jacinda Vidrio,” the girl says, grinning, and motions to the girl beside her. “This is Tiana. Are you really…you know…?” She motions toward a big poster that reads  _ STORYBROOKE  _ next to their party.

Henry bobs her head. “Future Mayor of Storybrooke, at your service,” she announces. Jacinda raises her eyebrows and looks unimpressed at her grandiosity. Somehow, Henry likes her even more because of it. “Or…just Henry,” she says, and she glances around. 

A few of the chaperones are doing a head count, and when they’re satisfied, they motion everyone to a portal. Henry hangs back, watching the awed sounds of the kids who’ve never experienced this before. There’s a girl near the front with her hair cut short bouncing like she’s about to pitch headfirst into the portal, and Henry rolls her eyes. 

“Lots of portal traveling, huh?” Tiana says. “We’ve gone a few times– my mother’s a queen in our realm, and we have a sister city in the Land Without Magic– but it’s always so cool. Like you never took more than a step.” She glides forward, falling into line, and Henry envies her grace.

But still, appearances. Henry takes a breath and steps forward, her head high, and nods to a few of the chaperones. They look awed instead of bemused, and Henry feels like a little less of a fool in this gaggle of children and a little more confident, a little more like herself.

She steps through the portal when it’s her turn, smug at her ease when she passes from one realm to the other, and she emerges triumphantly, without so much as a stumble, when a girl crashes into her. Henry topples over, her regal bearing falling to pieces, and she lets out a horrified noise.

“Sorry,” the girl pants, climbing back to her feet and extending a hand. “Gretel grabbed the last donut and I–” She stops. “Huh,” she says, staring at Henry.

Henry stares back, aghast. The girl is the one with the short hair, dark and rough like she’s never had much use for it, and she is all frenetic energy and confidence that Henry has always lacked. And she’s… 

“You look just like me,” Henry blurts out. It’s impossible. She’s an only child, the apple of her mother’s eye, and she knows absolutely that she doesn’t have a  _ twin _ . She’d been adopted at  _ birth.  _ She would have noticed– But this girl looks exactly like her, down to the slope of her eyes and the little dimple on her cheek. Their skin is the same shade of brown, their eyes the same deep color. It’s like looking in the mirror after a really bad haircut.

She touches her own hair self-consciously, and the girl gives her a cool, unimpressed look. “I don’t think so,” she says. 

“H-how can you not think so?” Henry sputters, aghast at her nerve. “Do you  _ see  _ us?” 

The girl circles her, almost predatory, and she smirks unkindly. Henry has never seen anyone be _ unkind  _ to her, Henrietta Mills, Princess of the Realms, before, and she gapes at the girl, taken aback. The girl says, “I mean, our coloring is similar, I guess, but your nose is off-center.” She screws up her own nose in distaste. “And your eyes are way too small for your face.” 

“Excuse me?” For an instant, Henry had almost imagined that this girl might be a  _ friend _ , a vaunted someone-her-age to show off to Mom. That thought is long gone.

“Scrawny,” the girl decides. “Scraggly hair.” 

“It’s  _ wavy _ –”

“And one ear is freakishly bigger than the other,” the girl finishes. “I don’t really see the resemblance.” She looks very smug, stepping back, and the expression on her face is much like the one that Henry gets when she’s taken down another assassin with a few easy spells. Henry wavers in place, and for the first time, she understands the shell-shocked expression on the assassins’ faces after she’s done with them. 

“You…you…” The girl waits patiently for Henry to finish, and all Henry can manage is, “You!” 

“You know it.” The girl slopes off to a few other girls, past a chaperone who watches her with bemusement. Henry stumbles, scurrying to the side like the opposite of a queen.  _ Humiliating _ . She decides right then and there that she despises her lookalike, and would be very happy to never see her again.

She has better things to contemplate, anyway. They’re in a reception room, a high-ceilinged ballroom from a castle that looks to be Enchanted Forest in design. There is a food table along one wall and small tables in the center of the room, and Henry wonders if they might be dancing soon. She’s well-trained in ballroom dancing, has danced hundreds of times with Mom and visitors, and she loves it nearly as much as she loves doing magic. It requires the same finesse, and she likes to imagine one day dancing through a fairytale of her own, a relationship with a girl or a boy like the ones that Mom has had– albeit with a happier ending.

But there is no dancing tonight. Instead, the leader of the program, a man named Dr. Porter, says, “We’ll be giving out room assignments for the trip today. Although we’ll be in a different place most nights, your roommate will remain consistent throughout. For safety reasons, there will be no swapping rooms. You get who you get.” His stern voice softens. “You’re all coming from very different worlds,” he reminds them. “You might learn something new about your roommate along the way.” 

Henry tunes out the speech. She isn’t worried about  _ that _ . Aunt Zelena had gotten her hands on the roster before the trip, and she’d paired Henry up with an  _ absolutely mad roommate _ , she’d said.

Then again, with Aunt Zelena, that could be a terrifying prospect.

* * *

Right. Cool. So Hope is stuck with the single worst roommate on this trip, her improbable doppelganger who also happens to be Mayor Mills’s stuffy stuck-up daughter. This is about to become the trip from hell instead of a cool tour of all the realms, and Hope slouches in her bed and ignores the prim voice from the other bed that says, “Mom says that the first step to self-confidence is to carry yourself at all times like you’re in the presence of your worst enemy.” 

Henry, of course, is sitting perfectly straight at the edge of her bed, inspecting her appearance in a mirror. She has one leg crossed over the other like she’s ten years older, and her long hair is braided over one shoulder. “And my nose is  _ not  _ off-center,” she says. “I measured it. It’s  _ borderline  _ on the right, but still fine.” 

“It lists to the left,” Hope says, mostly because it’s so easy to rile Henry up. Henry looks horrified and peers closer into the mirror. “Why are you here, anyway? Don’t you have some fancy functions to attend or something? What are you going to get out of a trip like this, beyond taking someone else’s spot?” 

Henry tears her eyes from the mirror to glare at her. “I didn’t want to go,” she says haughtily. “Mom thought that I should spend time with  _ kids my age _ . If you’re the microcosm of those, I see I’m going to gain very little from this trip. Mom will not be pleased.” 

Hope eyes her dubiously. “So I could piss off the Queen of the Realms by annoying you?” 

Henry looks pleased. “Now you’re getting it.” 

“Neat.” Hope stretches out on her bed. Henry gapes at her, outraged again, and Hope enjoys it with savage delight. Ma would find this hilarious, she’s sure, and she feels a little wave of homesickness at the thought of her. She has a phone with her to speak to Ma, but it doesn’t have any charms on it that will let it work between realms, and she’s pretty sure they aren’t in the Land Without Magic anymore. She’s on her own, and if annoying Henry is all she can do right now, she’s fully prepared to do her best at it. 

She watches Henry out of the corner of her eye. Henry is muttering something at her mirror now, some kind of charm, and she straightens even more and then exhales when there’s a voice from the mirror. 

“Henrietta,” says the ringing, silky voice of who Hope is sure is the Queen of the Realms. Hope swallows despite herself. There is something very imposing about even the tone of the queen, commanding respect even as it turns wry. “You look like you’ve been sitting too many etiquette lessons.” 

“Mom!” Henry protests, and she glances at Hope as though daring her to speak. Hope yawns, pretending to find a brochure fascinating rather than showing any interest in the conversation– which she is  _ intensely  _ interested in. “This is how I always sit.” 

“Mm-hm.” Mayor Mills sounds amused. “Not when you’re on the couch playing video games. I’m always afraid your back will never unbend. How is your trip so far? The house is so quiet without you, sweetheart.” She sounds almost mournful, and Hope– briefly entertained at the image of Henrietta Mills, stick-in-the-mud, playing video games– sneaks a look at the mirror. Henry is keeping it pointed at herself, out of Hope’s view, but Mayor Mills sounds so… _ nice _ . Normal, like a regular mom.

Ma will never believe this. The few times she’s ever mentioned the queen, it has been less than complimentary. Hope figures that Ma blames the queen for joining all the realms, which has led to way more monsters for Ma to fight. Ma mutters sometimes about it–  _ the hell was she thinking _ ,  _ this disaster in the making _ , and always snide comments that turn gloomy– and Hope knows that Ma must see the queen as another out-of-touch celebrity. Definitely not normal.

She angles herself on the bed, trying to get a glance of the queen, but Henry sees her peeking and frowns fiercely. “It’s fine,” she says. “I made some friends. There’s this absolutely nightmarish girl who I’m rooming with, but I’m not going to complain about it. I’m made of sterner stuff than that,” she finishes, her eyes darting to Hope smugly.

“Henry,” Mayor Mills says, and she sounds like she’s holding back a laugh. “Is your roommate in the room with you right now?” Henry looks shifty-eyed. “Be  _ nice _ ,” the queen says reprovingly. “Find some common ground.” 

“Oh, we have  _ nothing  _ in common. Except–” Henry hesitates, her eyes flickering back to Hope. Hope wonders what Mayor Mills might say if she’d see Hope, their near-identical faces. Maybe she’d want to meet her. Maybe Hope could get an audience with the  _ queen _ . 

She shakes off the thought. It might mean more time with Henry, which would be agonizing. Instead, she taps her own nose and flicks it, and Henry scowls at her. “Nothing,” she says instead. “Absolutely nothing in common.” 

“Make an effort, darling,” Mayor Mills says. “Sometimes the people who mean the most to you will be the ones you have to fight to understand.” She sounds distant, melancholy, and Henry’s fist clenches around the mirror. Hope watches, her eyebrows rising. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” She raises her voice. “And I’d love to meet you, too, mysterious roommate,” she calls, the melancholy fading from her voice. She lowers it again. “I love you, Henry.” 

“Love you, Mom,” Henry mutters, and she sets down the mirror, blank again, and glares out into nothingness.

Hope says, “Wow. You’re a fraud, aren’t you?” 

“Excuse me?”

“You’re all mature and buddy-buddy with the chaperones like you’re some kind of delegate to this trip instead of one of us, but you’re all  _ fake _ .” Hope is delighted at the realization. “You’re just like everyone else here! Another cranky adolescent.”

“I’m a future  _ queen _ ,” Henry says haughtily. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stretches out on her bed, staring up at the stone ceiling. 

Hope rolls over to stare at her. “Who is it?” 

Henry stares back. “Who?” 

“The person your mom was talking about. The one you looked like you wanted to strangle.” Hope had seen that fist and almost liked Henry for a minute, had been enchanted at the thought of rage simmering beneath the surface. 

Henry shrugs. “My other mother,” she says, and it sounds strange, like it doesn’t quite sit well on her tongue. 

Hope is spellbound. “Mayor Mills, Queen of the Realms, is  _ gay _ ?” Henry’s eyes flash, and Hope says hastily, “No, like, it’s cool. My mom used to be married to a lady. I just thought that would be bigger news.” 

“Storybrooke is a lot more advanced than your dumb world,” Henry says, rolling back over. “Just means that sometimes the jerks who leave your mom are girls. That’s all.” 

Her fists are clenched again, and Hope says, “I think–” 

“Shut up,  _ Swan _ .” And for all her snottiness for appearances’ sake, Henry is a pro at infusing her voice with disdain. 

“Go screw yourself,  _ Mills _ ,” Hope retorts in the same exact voice, and they glower at the ceiling in tandem and refuse to speak again for the rest of the night.

* * *

Regina watches her mirror go blank and feels an indescribable wave of loneliness. It’s always like this when Henry is away, even when she’s only visiting Zelena and comes back home by night. She had filled the scarred crevices of her heart with Henry– had filled her whole heart with Henry, and she is only the spaces that hold her daughter in place– and when Henry is away, she is left with her regrets and sorrow.

Mostly, she is left with the absence of Emma, ever-lingering in her heart. 

She turns over every piece of the past seventeen years in her memory, over and over again, as though they can explain where it had all gone wrong. Maybe it had been her all along, too sharp and mercurial to ever be loved safely. Maybe it had been Emma, who had never been too comfortable with belonging anywhere. Maybe it had been both of them, women accustomed to self-sabotage and in disbelief that they could ever keep anything good.

She wonders sometimes if it had only been that they had gone immediately from enemies to lovers and never learned how to be friends. Emma had arrived at her door, chasing a bounty that had never materialized. She had stayed because of a budding attraction, because of Regina, because of the curse. They had fallen in love and broken a curse and it had still taken them years to figure out who they’d been to each other– for god’s sake, Emma had nearly gotten  _ married  _ to that cretin Hook before Regina had whisked her away on her wedding day– and they’d only known how to fight together and never how to embrace the quiet as a team.

Maybe it had only been that they had never had anything else to unite them but their tumultuous attraction, but the love that had swallowed them both up until they’d been lost.

Regina takes a breath and stares at the photograph on her mantle, the portrait of her with her arms wrapped around a gap-toothed six-year-old Henry. There are times when she’ll look at Henry and think  _ Emma would love her so much _ and her chest tightens painfully. Henry, sunshine incarnate, determined to become her mother and yet with so much youthful innocence that Regina had never had. Henry with her desperate desire to be taken seriously and her need to know  _ everything _ . Emma would have tempered her, Regina thinks, would have taught her to have fun. Emma would have taught her cynicism when Regina had only managed to give her idealistic eyes.

If only Emma were here, she would have given Henry everything. And Regina knows that she isn’t thinking about Henry anymore at all, and her heart seizes up.

She doesn’t even know the other girl’s name. It had been a question on her lips when she’d seen Emma watching her, holding her daughter so tightly that Regina had longed to go to them. But then Emma had averted her eyes and Regina had swallowed the question and looked back at Henry. 

There have been moments of weakness over the years– moments when Regina had thought to search for them, to see where  _ Emma Swan and Daughter  _ have gone into the world. To see the other little girl, just like Henry but not, and to see what they could be as a family. Two mothers. Two daughters.  _ Sisters _ , and Regina lets out a dry sob. She had wanted to seek them out, except that there had never been a reason that wouldn’t be rebuffed. The other little girl is not hers. Emma is not hers. They had agreed with cold fury that they would leave each other alone for good, the only kindness they’d done for each other in years.

_ If nothing else, you owe me that _ , Emma had said fiercely at the final arbitration before the divorce had been finalized.  _ You’ve taken too many of my years.  _

Twenty-eight, then five more. Regina had had no retort to that. There had been a time when Emma had sworn that Regina had left the Evil Queen behind– that their love had been redemption, forgiveness, a new life– and that arbitration had been the nail in the coffin of their marriage, the death of their love.

Yet, as the years have passed, in the quiet of Henry’s absence, Regina thinks only of her big, empty house, and the three people she longs for most.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....remember how I said I wouldn't start posting twice a week until I had a bunch of chapters saved up? In a WHIRLWIND of productivity, I've been writing all night every night? No sleep, but lots of chapters. So Sunday and Thursday updates! I have no idea how many chapters this will be but let's say around ten? who knows
> 
> Thank you for the COMMENTS and KOFIS and I LOVE U ALL ENJOY!!!!

The first call comes from Hope on the second day, just after dinner. Emma has been close to giving in and enchanting a mirror on Hope’s end, Regina-esque, to talk to her, and she’s rewarded for her patience with Hope’s name on her phone screen. “Ma! I didn’t know if it would work but– we’re in the  _ Land Without Color _ . Like, old monster movies kind of realm. It’s  _ amazing _ .” She sounds breathless, in awe, as thrilled to be adventuring as she is to be talking to Emma. 

Emma manages a smile. She had known that this would be it for Hope, the beginning of the end of their safe little enclave in the Land Without Magic. Hope has a wanderlust that Emma had never had, a love for exploring the unknown and new experiences that Emma had grown out of somewhere around the third foster home. “It sounds like it’s really something.” 

“Tomorrow we’re supposed to travel on a  _ pirate ship _ .” Hope laughs aloud. “You used to date a pirate, right?” 

“I almost married a pirate,” Emma says ruefully. “Mistakes were made.” She thinks back to that time in her life with an odd kind of nostalgia, when things were simpler and she’d let herself play at being a girlfriend first and a person second. 

Hook had never been her first choice– she’d been hopelessly in love with Regina for far too long, had despaired of it and been prepared to settle– and it feels almost cathartic, pretending to be that person she’d tried to be with him. Disappearing into someone else’s expectations, losing herself to them. 

It’s better than being rejected by Regina for the person she’d actually been. “Look, if you see a guy with a hook for a hand when you’re on that ship, do  _ not  _ give him your last name.”

“Oh, boy, Ma,” Hope says in a singsong, and she laughs again. There’s a voice in the background, almost familiar but not quite, and Hope says to someone with her, “Can you shut it for a minute? You can get your bedtime story from Mommy when I’m done.” She returns to the phone. “My roommate is this unbelievably stuck up brat who also happens to be– oh my  _ god _ , I don’t care about your scheduled call–” she snaps to the ostensible roommate, and Emma winces.

“Kid, try to be a little nicer to your roommate, okay? You never know who might wind up being a…fire-breathing dragon or…your long-lost mother, cursed to not remember you,” she puts in, and Hope laughs wildly, the stirrings of hysteria in the noise. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says, and she hesitates, then says, “Ma, if I told you that…” Her voice trails off.

Emma says, “Hope?” Her stomach bottoms out, and she doesn’t know what Hope is going to talk about. Has she already fallen in love with the realms? Or is it something much worse, something that Emma isn’t prepared for–

“It’s nothing,” Hope says finally. “I love you, Ma. More than anything on this whole dumb, amazing trip.” There’s another curt, annoyed comment in the background. “And the only reason why I’m not going to murder my annoying roommate is because the tabloids would probably blame you for my troubled upbringing if I did it. So you’re welcome.”

Hope remains the best thing that Emma has ever done, and her heart swells. “Love you, kiddo.” The phone clicks off, and there’s nothing left to do but wander through the apartment as though she’s sleepwalking, clutching the phone to her chest. 

She reaches instinctively to the drawer in her nightstand, pulling it out to grab the photograph she keeps inside it. But the photo is gone, and Emma heaves a sigh. “Come  _ on _ , kiddo,” she says.

It’s not as though there aren’t other pictures– there had been hundreds, maybe thousands on her phone, and she’d deleted them from her phone but not from her hard drive– but the fact that Hope had snagged this one worries Emma. Hope shouldn’t be looking at pictures of Regina, or thinking about Regina at all.

Someday, Hope will inevitably cross paths with Regina. It had been Emma’s fear when Hope had come home, alight with the news that she’d won a slot in this program. She’d been relieved to discover that Regina isn’t involved, and the only familiar face in the program had been Mulan, who’s never even met Regina. 

But that was this time. It won’t be forever. And when the day comes that Hope sees the woman in the picture in person, she’s going to have questions. When she meets Henrietta, she’s going to have even more. And all Emma can do is stave off the inevitable for as long as she can, holding onto her daughter before Hope ventures into a world where Emma can’t be. 

_ Can’t or won’t?  _ Regina had challenged her once near the end. 

_ I just can’t do this _ , Emma had whispered, and she’d wanted to sob with the force of the emotions that had come with it.  _ I won’t. Does it matter which it is?  _ She’d hated knowing that every conversation would end badly, that they’d both fallen into the habit of only seeing every overture as a criticism.  _ Maybe we just need to…to take some time. _

Regina had looked stricken.  _ Time?  _ The word  _ divorce _ had not yet been uttered. Once it had been said, it could never be unsaid, and they’d danced around it for weeks before Regina had spoken it, after the single worst fight they’d ever had.

When Emma looks back, she can’t remember why she’d ever fought with Regina. Squabbles, silly and devastating, and broken hearts lying on the pavement outside their shared home. Tension that had come from outside, and all-consuming love that had made them drawn to each other with all the force of a magnetic field, impossible to even think to give each other space. They’d loved each other so hard that they’d been incapable of taking the time that Emma had suggested, and had instead lashed out and exhausted each other with it. 

She opens her phone’s browser on private mode and searches for  _ Regina Mills _ , a morbid fascination that she has done on more than one occasion, and she scrolls through the pictures like a starving man at a feast, peering at the pictures and struggling not to press each one, to study each feature on Regina’s face. She keeps scrolling until she’s nauseous with wanting, with  _ you should be here  _ and–

And there is the girl she always sees if she scrolls far down enough. Identical to Hope in every way, save for her long hair and the way she smiles at the paparazzi like she’s been trained for it. Henrietta Mills, the girl who Emma has never known. “You should both be here,” Emma whispers hoarsely, aloud.

She squeezes her lips shut tightly, sick at her own wanting.  _ No _ . She can’t spend a lifetime yearning for things out of her grasp. She can’t spend forever dreading a reunion that will never happen. She has to move forward, to find some kind of respite from Regina, who has been haunting her for twelve years.

_ Knock _ . _ Knock _ . The sound of a knock at the door is unexpected, and Emma wonders wildly if she could have summoned Regina by force of will, have changed her life so fully just by wishing hard enough. There had been a time when that had been all that they’d needed to come to each other.

She sets down her phone and goes to the door, opening it before she can lose her nerve, and she gapes at the person on the other side. 

It isn’t Regina. But it is a respite, so perfectly appeared that she thinks she must have wished him into being. “I saw a  _ Swan  _ on the guest list for a Jolly Roger outing tomorrow,” Hook says, smirking at her. “It got me thinking.”

Emma takes a breath, and acquiesces to the less-bad bad idea. “Come on in,” she says.

* * *

Hope is a  _ laugher _ . A reads-a-book-and-snorts-through-the-whole-thing laugher. Henry grits her teeth and tries to remind herself to rise above it, that she has fought literal demons and legendary villains and she can handle one roommate who can’t read a book properly, but it’s a challenge.

Hope also comments as she reads. “No way,” she says, her eyes widening. “Really?”

“What?” Henry asks despite herself. 

Hope gives her a scornful look. “I’m not giving you a running commentary of my book,” she says. “You wouldn’t like it. It’s funny.” 

“I’m just impressed you know how to read,” Henry shoots back, very pleased with her retort. 

Hope’s eyes narrow. “Wow,” she says. “That’s so closed-minded of Mayor Mills’s daughter. Did you know that the literacy rate in the Enchanted Forest is under fifty percent? There’s a crisis in schooling in the land and you’re laughing about it?” 

Henry bites her lip. “Really?” 

Hope snorts. “God, you’re dumb. How should I know? I’m not the queen of the universe’s daughter.” She smirks at her book, done with Henry, and Henry fumes in silence.

There’s the other thing, the thing they haven’t spoken about since the first day, and it makes Henry’s head spin.  _ Why  _ does Hope look like her? They’re nothing alike,  _ obviously _ , but they’re clearly identical. Magic is everywhere and there are dozens of possibilities for what might have happened, but Henry doesn’t understand how any of them make sense. It’s not like she has a secret twin sister. No way Mom wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to adopt two kids instead of one. So then who is Hope? 

She falls into a troubled sleep, tossing and turning and waking up every time Hope snores too loudly. Because  _ right _ , that’s something else that they don’t have in common. Someone would have told Henry if she snores, she’s sure of it. 

Tomorrow, they’re supposed to be going on some pirate ship, which makes Henry antsy. Mom hates pirates with a burning passion, and this had been the one day of the trip that had made her willing to cancel the whole thing.  _ You go anywhere near a pirate and I’m yanking the whole program _ , Mom had threatened earlier in the night, Hope listening from her bed in fascination. Hope doesn’t even pretend not to eavesdrop, of  _ course _ . Perish the thought that she might be polite for once.

She rolls over, away from Hope, and tries to tune out the sound of her snoring. They’re sleeping in a strange little cluster of cabins near the edge of the sea today, each set of roommates in a two-bedroom cabin with a bathroom between them. Jacinda and Tiana had gotten the other room in their cabin, which is a relief– Henry does  _ not  _ trust that Gretel girl– but they’d been just as interested in Hope as they are in Henry. 

Hope, apparently, has some super-cool monster hunting mother, and she’d kept the other girls busy with an elaborate story that Henry is positive she’d made up. “Okay, so Ma is trying to get the unicorn, right–” 

“Not the unicorn!” Henry had said, horrified.

“Ugh, follow the story, Henrietta,” Hope had said irritably. “Blood-sucking, human-goring unicorn–” And on she’d went, the story growing more and more outlandish as it had gone on. Jacinda had been breathless with anticipation at the end, which had made Henry even crankier. Jacinda is  _ her  _ friend, not Hope’s–

And is that Jacinda out in the cabin right now? Henry perks up, listening to the creaking noise near their door. Maybe she’s looking for company. It’s late, but not too late to look through some of the games on the shelves of the cabin common room. The door slides open, and Henry rolls over, faking a yawn–

And  _ crap _ , it’s just another kidnapper. The assassins are easier to deal with than the kidnappers. The assassins just want revenge on Mom, and they rarely have any skill. The kidnappings are premeditated by people who think they can deal with Mom, and that usually means… 

Henry mutters a charm that glances off the man stalking into the room. He stares at Hope in her bed, briefly puzzled, and Henry entertains herself for a moment by imagining herself as Queen Amidala from Star Wars with a handmaiden who looks just like her. Then, a blade appears in the man’s hand, and Henry sits up.

She can handle her attackers, though she isn’t supposed to. Mom is livid whenever another attackers gets through the protections that she’s set up, though each time it happens a little less easily. But every protection will be broken through eventually. Magic exists to be surpassed, and Mom has taught her that.

“I wouldn’t try to use that thing, if I were you,” Henry says seriously, readying a little vial guaranteed to dissolve the man. 

He walks forward with a sneer, and Henry throws the vial.

It hits him and turns his skin an angry shade of red, and Henry says delicately, “I told you so,” as the skin sloughs off of the man. But he doesn’t stop moving, his hand still clutching his knife, and Henry winces. She hadn’t prepared for  _ that _ .

The man is nearly at her bed, and Henry scurries back, drawing her blanket up to her neck. She whispers a charm, and it glances off of him, impotent. “Okay,” she says, biting her lip, and she makes a mad dash for her mirror–

A hand closes around her neck, holding her immobile, and Henry chokes and struggles uselessly against his grasp. The grip tightens, and she can’t breathe– can’t move–

“Hey!” A book crashes against the man’s temple, sharp edge to his skin. He grunts, his hand loosening around Henry’s neck, and she wriggles free. 

Hope stands on her bed, barefoot in pajamas, bouncing as though she’s raring for a fight. “Hope, get  _ out  _ of here,” Henry hisses.

Hope scoffs. “And let you get all the glory? No way.” She leaps through the air, fearless and idiotic, and lands on the man.

“Get off of me!” he snarls– no,  _ hisses _ , and he isn’t a man at all but something else, the skin falling away to reveal an enormous serpent thrashing through their room. Hope claws at its eyes, laughs as she’s thrown backward and propels herself off of the wall like she’s been trained to fight. She’s a blur of fists and laughter, unstoppable out of sheer stubbornness, and Henry watches her in horror.

The serpent catches her with the tip of its tail and Henry mutters charms as quickly as she can, cushioning Hope’s falls and berating her in the same breath. “Stop it!  _ Stop  _ it! You’re going to get  _ killed _ –” 

“Now you’re complaining about that?” Hope says disbelievingly. “I really can’t win with you, can I?” 

“Shut up,” Henry says desperately, thinking as quickly as she can. She mutters words over and over again, a chant that’s supposed to create fire. She’s never had much luck with it before, but it might be their only chance– 

The serpent is thrashing around again, and Henry says the charm again and again, watching the slow puff of smoke in her palm. Their belongings are thrown to the floor, their suitcases hurtled into walls and coming open all over the floor, and Henry bites her lips and chants faster, angling her hand to avoid her favorite sweater. 

Hope slams into the wall, too hard, and Henry forgets her clothes when Hope doesn’t move, limp on the floor. The words pick up, fire spurting to life on her palm, and Henry lets the panic motivate her, the fear for Hope like nothing she’s ever felt before. She says the words again and roaring fire bursts from her palm like she’s Mom, blasting out at the serpent and scorching it to a crisp all over Henry’s favorite sweater.

“Crap! Crap, crap–” She hurries to Hope, still limp on the ground, and she grabs her by the arms and shakes her. “Wake  _ up _ ! Wake up, you  _ idiot _ – what did you think you were  _ doing _ –” Hope blinks at her, a little woozy, and Henry says furiously, “You better not be concussed. I’ll kill you if you’re concussed.” 

Hope coughs, a little blood escaping onto her palm, and Henry stares at her in dismay. “Didn’t know you cared,” she says, that stupid smirk back on her face, and Henry hugs her, right there and then. “Okay,” Hope says, sounding discomfited. “Whoa. Slow down. There, there.” She pats Henry on her shoulder, jerky little taps that are deeply uncomforting, and Henry wriggles away from Hope. 

“Ugh,” she says, embarrassed. “I thought I had gotten you killed.” 

Hope shrugs. “Takes more than some weirdo snake monster to make me dead,” she says. “That happen to you a lot?” 

“A few times a month,” Henry admits. “People are always trying to get at my mom.” She turns around to pick up her things, separating them from Hope’s. “At my birthday last month, someone poisoned the cake. I guess you just get used to it after a while. My mom hates it, but I kept slipping away from the bodyguards she sent to stalk me. They probably stop most of the attacks.” She’s pretty sure that a few of the chaperones are bodyguards, too, but she prefers not to know about them. “I learned to defend myself. What?” 

Hope is still staring at her, and Henry scratches away a little bit of serpent gut, self-conscious. “It’s not a big deal.” 

“No. It’s just…” Hope’s eyes are on Henry, wide as though she’s just seen a ghost. “My birthday was last month, too. The eighteenth.” 

“Right.” Henry stares back. “Mine, too.” This isn’t just an accident, then, a strange coincidence of appearance. “I’m– it’s also the day that I was adopted.”

“No way.” Hope shakes her head vigorously. “My mom would have  _ said  _ if there was another kid when she adopted me. If there were– Which realm were you adopted from?” she demands.

Henry knows this, has even seen a single photograph that Mom had taken with her birth mother. They’d been in finery, beautiful dresses in that fluffy style, and she says with confidence, “The Enchanted Forest.” 

“I’m from somewhere called the Wish Realm,” Hope says, sounding relieved. “We’re not related. We’re just alternate versions of the same person.” The mystery is settled, but Henry isn’t satisfied. It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. 

“Then why,” she says, and her eyes fall on something on the floor, something impossible. It’s sandwiched between the ashes of Henry’s favorite sweater and a big stuffed swan that must be Hope’s, and it’s the last piece of a puzzle that still can’t be, that still isn’t… “Then why,” she repeats, and her voice is strident. “Why do you have a picture of my mother?” 

“What?” Hope follows her gaze, and her eyes land on the photo with renewed trepidation. “No. That’s my– my mother,” she says. “Sort of. I think.” 

With trembling hands, Henry reaches into the pocket of her robe and retrieves her magical photo album. It’s a little rectangle, and when she rubs the bottom of it, pictures appear like little holograms above the rectangle. She rubs it back and forth, back and forth, through dozens of pictures of Mom and her, through pictures with Aunt Zelena and even Snow White– and she ignores the gasps of recognition from Hope at them–

And then she gets to the picture she wants, and Hope says, her words awash with wonder, “That’s my Ma.” 

“That’s my Mom,” Henry says, pointing to the picture that Hope holds tightly in her hand. She is awestruck, in disbelief, and she gapes at Hope in equal wonder. “We’re not just…just copies of each other, are we? We’re…we’re sisters. Like  _ twins _ .” 

This time, they move to each other, holding onto each other so tightly that Henry can’t breathe and doesn’t want to. A  _ sister _ . She’s never wanted anything more. Hope is  _ hers _ , is as much hers as Mom, and she’s…

Oh, wow. She’s  _ the  _ Emma’s daughter. Emma who had broken Mom’s heart. Henry trembles, feels confused anger return, and she says, “Wait.” 

* * *

Hope is an only child, except that she isn’t. Not anymore, and the girl who had once seemed insufferable is  _ hers _ . As far as she’s concerned, she has a sister, and Ma is going to  _ hear from her _ when she gets back and demands answers. But for now, she’s accosted by Henry’s– by her sister’s!– questions. “Your mother left mine!” 

“ _ Your  _ mother had an affair– wait.” Hope hastily puts several things together and concludes that, in fact, the  _ they  _ that Ma had always referred to had been her ex and said ex’s daughter. “Maybe not. Oh, god. Wait. Your mom– our mom– she’s single, right?” 

“She never got over your mom,” Henry says, and she looks furious about it. “She abandoned us.” 

“Not how I’ve heard it.” Hope shifts uncomfortably. “Ma  _ loves _ Mom. I stole this picture from her nightstand. She takes it out and stares at it like some doofy lovestruck–” 

“Then why did she leave?” Henry demands, her eyes bright with anger. For a girl who’d nearly been eaten by a giant serpent and is still streaked with serpent goo, she’s surprisingly collected. “Mom is  _ heartbroken. _ She’s never dated anyone since her. Emma. And believe me, she’s had no shortage of suitors.” 

“My mother is the queen of all the realms,” Hope says wonderingly, sidetracked by this realization. “My god. I’m basically a superhero.” 

Henry peers at her from under her eyelashes, the veneer of disdain replaced with secret admiration. “I could tell  _ that  _ from the way you jumped the serpent.” Hope thinks that she might actually like her sister, after all. It’s a pretty great feeling. “I can’t believe it. Tell me about her.” 

“Ma? She’s…I don’t know. Tough. Smart. But also kind of doofy. Last week she tripped three times on the way to the kitchen while trying to get a piece of toilet paper off the bottom of her boot,” Hope says thoughtfully. “And she loves nerdy stuff like Harry Potter– she insists that I’m a  _ Slytherin _ , whatever that means–” 

“I’m a Ravenclaw,” Henry breathes, her eyes trained on Hope. “What else?” 

“She gets into moods. Sad ones. She had a really hard life before me. Like…stuck in a wardrobe as a baby to save the world kind of sad. There was some big villain she had to fight–” Ma had always been vague about that part, the stuff that wasn’t about Grandma and Gramps, and Hope’s eyes round. “Mom. It was Mom, wasn’t it? Oh, my god. She fell in love with her instead.” 

Henry looks like she might cry. “Stop. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” She clears her throat. “Mom talks about her all the time. How Emma was the reason she tried to be better and found her redemption.” 

“Ma,” Hope reminds her. “Your Ma. Not  _ Emma _ .” 

Henry shrugs. “I don’t know her,” she says sulkily. “I don’t even know if I want to.”

It’s Hope’s turn. “Tell me about Mom, then,” she says, pushing aside Henry’s weird thing about Ma. “I know she’s Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms. But aside from that.” 

Henry’s eyes light up, and she launches into a description of a mother she clearly adores. “She’s the  _ best _ . She always has time for me, even when the realms are in crisis, and she takes me with her when she can’t stop fighting. She’s funny and she’s cool and she does magic like it’s  _ nothing _ , just a flick of the wrist. She hates half the people she has to work with but she pretends to tolerate them and then does these impressions at dinner– and she’s overprotective, but we’re working on it. I have to tell her about the serpent!” she says, her eyes wide. “And about  _ you _ !” 

“No!” Hope nearly yelps. She lowers her voice. “No way. We can’t tell them anything. They kept us apart for twelve years!” She doesn’t care if there are reasonable answers to why, and she can already hear them in Ma’s apologetic voice.  _ I just didn’t think of you as sisters _ . Or worse, uninterested:  _ why would you care about her? She has nothing to do with us _ . Hope shudders. “You know what’ll happen. They’ll pull us off this trip and then we’ll never see each other again. Do you want that?” 

Henry wrings her hands. “Definitely not,” she says, and she leans against Hope, curled up beside her on the floor. “You’re  _ mine _ ,” she whispers, so fierce that Hope glows. “No one’s taking you away from me.” 

They move to Henry’s bed, Hope curled against the wall and out of sight of the mirror before Henry whispers words into the mirror. “Show me Mom,” she says after the chant, and the mirror flickers for a moment, the light sparking on it until Mayor Mills– until  _ Mom _ appears.

She doesn’t look anything like the woman in the picture, hair perfect and smile blinding. In the mirror, she looks sleep-rumpled and tired, and her voice is hoarse. “Henry. What’s wrong, sweetheart?” She blinks away some of the sleep in her eyes, and then she is exactly as beautiful as Hope has always imagined her. 

Henry manages a wan smile. “Giant serpent,” she says, and then hastily, “We took care of it! It’s fine. Don’t take me home,  _ please _ .” 

Mom looks fire-eyed, furious and protective, and it steals Hope’s breath away. She’s never been one for celebrity, for falling over the idea of the Queen of the Realms, but this is her  _ mother _ , and Hope only wants to know what it must feel like to feel that fury on her own behalf. “You have bodyguards–” 

“They’re not perfect. No one is. I promise, I’m okay,” Henry reminds Mom, drawing her robe tighter around herself. “It only took us a few minutes to dispatch the beast.” 

Hope takes a moment to marvel at the girl exactly her age who says things like  _ dispatch the beast _ , then is distracted again when Mom says, “Who exactly is  _ us _ ?” 

“Uh. My roommate helped.” Henry gives Hope a shining smile, and Hope can see Mom’s eyes move across the mirror, straining to see her. “She’s really shy or she’d come to the mirror now. But she’s great. I’m really enjoying this program. I made friends! There’s Jacinda and Tiana and…and Gretel,” she finishes. “My roommate Gretel.” 

“Thank you, Gretel,” Mom says softly, and she smiles, a smile meant only for Hope. Hope craves more, more smiles, more of those shining eyes. She had thought her family complete before today, content with Ma and nothing more, and that had disappeared in an instant. Now, there are two more slots beside Ma, one for Henry and one for Mom, and she can’t bear to be without them for any longer.

An idea begins to crystallize in her mind, a daring, ridiculous plan to be with Mom. To know her like she does Ma, to be loved by her, too. To even meddle a little and figure out why it is that her mothers had left each other in the first place.

If they’re both still pining, then maybe all they need is another push to get them back together. “I have an idea,” she says when Henry has said her goodbyes to Mom. “You want to meet Ma, don’t you? And I need to meet Mom.” 

“Yeah?” Henry looks dubious, her long braid tucked over her shoulder. Little flyaway hairs have escaped since the serpent, and she looks far less collected than usual. “What can we do already, short of…?” Her eyes widen as she reads the expression on Hope’s face, and she tangles her fingers into her braid protectively. “Hope, you  _ Slytherin _ .” 

“Still don’t know what that means. Still choose to take it as a compliment,” Hope says flippantly. “And you know I’m right. Plus,” she says slyly. “What happens when they have to fix it? They’re going to have to see each other again if we pull this off. And who knows what might happen then.”

Henry’s fingers are clutching her braid so tightly now that Hope half expects it to be yanked from her head. “It’ll grow back,” she offers. “Like…eventually.”

“Very reassuring,” Henry says dryly. “Someday, I might have good hair again.” She sighs again, and Hope is reminded why it is that she likes Henry when Henry’s eyes turn wistful. “Do you think they might…do you think that they might really fall in love again?” 

“I don’t know if they ever stopped,” Hope says with confidence. “And wouldn’t you like to meet Ma?” she coaxes. “She’s my favorite person in the whole world. You’ll love her.” 

Henry closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says, and she reaches down to the floor. She returns, and Hope watches in bemusement as proper, haughty, queen-in-training Henry holds up a knife still covered in serpent blood and hacks away at her braid until their hair is almost the same length. “Okay,” she says again, and she drops the knife and turns, looking at Hope in defiance. “This had better be worth it.” 

* * *

There’s another call from Hope in the morning, when Emma is supposed to be going to work instead of chatting with her daughter. Emma sits back down on the couch. The monsters can wait. “What’s up, kiddo?” 

“Hey, Ma.” The voice on the other end sounds just a little off, too shrill to be Hope’s usual tone, and Emma frowns. 

“Are you okay?” 

The phone is shifted, a rustle of fabric against the speaker, and then Hope is back. “I’m fine.” Hope sounds more like herself now, and Emma relaxes. “I just miss you,” she admits, and Emma takes a breath. 

“I miss you, too. Breakfast isn’t the same without you giving me the evil eye over your Cocoa Puffs.” It’s impressive that Hope is awake now without trying to decapitate whoever had awakened her. Emma has dodged her share of hardcover books frisbeed in her direction.

“Yeah, yeah.” There’s a noise like a few hurried whispers, and then Hope is back. Emma listens, bemused and a little pleased. Hope has made some friends, then. “I don’t like you being all alone,” Hope says, suddenly serious. “It’s not good for you.” 

“Who’s the mom here, me or you?” Emma says half-jokingly. This is what they always say about single moms and their kids, that the kids wind up raising the moms a little, and Hope sometimes feels more like a friend than a daughter. 

She can almost hear Hope’s shrug on the phone. “Why’d you end things with my other mom?” she says abruptly. 

It’s so sudden that Emma is taken aback. “She’s– you know she isn’t–” She takes a breath. “I don’t know,” she says.

“What does that mean?” Hope’s voice has taken that high note again, the weird shrillness that sounds a hair off to Emma. “How can you not  _ know _ ?” 

“I wish I could tell you something big and dramatic,” Emma says, suddenly tired. “That one of us had done something unforgivable that we couldn’t come back from or that there had been some event that had torn us apart.” She’d gone back after, had analyzed every last interaction for some sign of what had gone so wrong. Instead, she’d been left at a loss. “But it wasn’t like that. We were just…volatile. It had been some very traumatic years, and I don’t think either of us had been ready to build something lasting then. By the end, we hated each other just a little more than we loved each other, and I guess that was the point when we realized it just wasn’t meant to be.” 

Hope’s voice is shrill again. “But that means you could still–mmph!” 

She sounds suddenly muffled, and Emma says warily, “Kid?”

The phone is suddenly clearer, and Emma can hear much less of the background noise. “Took you off speaker,” Hope says, her voice calm again. “There was some kind of annoying  _ bug _ buzzing in the room.” There’s another muffled noise on the other end of the phone, and Emma wonders if the roommate she hates has just awakened.

She clears her throat. “I don’t think it’s really healthy for you to be so fixated on…on her,” she says. “The woman who isn’t your mother. It’s been twelve years, kid.” She drums her fingers against her knee. “I know you took that photograph from my nightstand.” 

She can almost hear Hope’s pout. “Is it so wrong to want you to be happy?”

“No,” Emma concedes, and she takes the plunge, says what she’d been debating telling Hope since yesterday. “And for the record, I have a date tomorrow.”

“ _ What _ ?” 

“He’s someone I knew back when…well, I was too hung up on her to ever really give him a chance. You’ll be on his ship today, actually. And I do like him,” she says, a little weakly in the face of Hope’s silent displeasure. “I think it’d just be…it’d be nice not to be alone, wouldn’t it?” 

Hope no longer sounds displeased, only distracted. “Sure,” she says, and then, uncertainly, “I love you, Ma.” 

“I love you, kid. Head to toes and everywhere in between.” She longs to pinch Hope’s nose now like she had when she’d been younger, to listen to her giggle and feel the quick hug around her waist, but Hope is off in a cabin somewhere far away and Emma is here, lost in memories.

* * *

Hope hangs up the phone and glowers at Henry, who is still backed against the wall of the bed, with her hands on her stomach where Hope had kicked her. “Learn some subtlety, dumbass.”

Henry ignores her glare. “What did she say?” she says anxiously. “You looked worried.” 

Hope calculates, very quickly, the odds of Henry going along with all of this if she knows that Ma is dating again. They are not good. “Just that she knows the pirate whose ship we’re going on today. So we’ve got to get out of that before he reports back to her that he’s seen two of us. That’s all,” she lies.

Henry looks relieved. “Okay. I can do that.” She straightens. “And Mom and Emma?” 

Is it weird that Henry won’t call Ma anything but Emma? Maybe a little. Maybe it’s just growing on her now, Hope decides. Nothing to worry about. “This’ll be a breeze,” she promises Henry. “We’ve got this.” She touches the jagged bob of Henry’s hair, speculative. “Ma barely realized that there were two of us talking to her. So we swap places. Get to know our other mothers. And then, when the truth comes out, we make them meet again. Easy as stabbing an ogre.” 

Henry looks at her with the sidelong glance of someone who may have met more ogres than Hope’s zero. “Have you ever stabbed an ogre before?” 

Hope shrugs carelessly. “How hard could it be?” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have reached chapter six in writing (stay tuned for chapter five, it's a DOOZY) so biweekly updates shall continue! i'm still thinking about ten chapters but maybe a little longer? definitely not less. we are 30k in so this shall be a significant endeavor, whoops. 
> 
> thank you for all your kind responses to this!! y'all keep this motor going and we are running FAST down the freeway whew

When Mulan had agreed to work this job, it had been because she’d thought she liked kids and because her girlfriend had been insistent that it would be good for  _ fostering good feelings between realms or whatever brochure shit _ . She had gambled on some problem kids– there are plenty of bratty princesses out there and a few budding villains– but she’d figured that she could handle them after saving all of China.

She had not prepared for two girls named Swan and Mills, absolutely identical– even more so now that Henrietta Mills had cut her hair, which seems ominously scheme-adjacent– and she pinches her nose and takes another breath. “The trip isn’t optional.” 

“But I’m sick,” says one of the girls– Hope, maybe? Mulan guesses it from the blue jeans. She gives a very light cough and looks up hopefully.

The other girl straightens. “I am troubled by the ethics of this outing,” she says, and  _ oh, yeah _ , that’s a Mills. “I can’t in good conscience ride in a pirate ship. Piracy is morally wrong.” She clears her throat and raises one finger. “One, classic pirates don’t see themselves as rightfully warring against undemocratic monarchies. They target the closest ship, regardless of who sails upon it. So we can’t argue that there’s a subversive component to it.” A second finger appears. “Two, piracy is a misogynistic, patriarchal enterprise. There is unconscionable violence against women on many of these ships, and personally, I–” 

“Okay!” Mulan says hastily. “I see you’re both feeling…sick. Very sick.” Hope coughs again. Henrietta glances at Hope and then coughs with her, a hacking noise that is much more convincing than Hope’s. “Why don’t you go back to your cabin and get some rest? We’ll keep a chaperone here.” 

“Maybe not one of Mom’s bodyguards,” Hope says helpfully– and isn’t Hope supposed to be Emma’s kid? Mom who? Hadn’t it been Mayor Mills who’d required bodyguards to monitor her daughter? “Henry nearly got kidnapped last night.” 

“We’d rather someone more competent,” Henrietta agrees. She looks hopefully at Mulan. “Ruby says that you’re the best fighter she’s ever met. We could spar with you!” she exclaims, clapping her hands together. “All day!” 

“I  _ love  _ sparring.” There is a frightening glint in Hope Swan’s eyes that makes Mulan very wary of what she might do with a sword in hand.

“You’re sick,” Mulan reminds them, making a hasty retreat. The two girls, nearly identical, pout up at her. She backs away. “Go…to your cabins. I’ll find…someone.” The girls exchange glances and begin whispering madly to each other. Mulan keeps backing away, afraid to lose sight of them, and she exhales when they retreat to their cabin, hand in hand.

She isn’t getting paid nearly enough for this.

* * *

The prep begins, and, all things told, Henry is pretty pleased with herself. Hope might be the brains behind this scheme, but Henry hasn’t been studying family trees and important delegations for years to not have a remarkable memory. “Okay. So you live somewhere called Chicago. I’ve heard of that place. And your apartment is…4C. 3602 Main Street.” She rattles off each detail, smug when Hope watches her in amazement. “You live with Emma–” 

“Ma. You gotta call her Ma,” Hope puts in, brow furrowed.

Henry bites her lip hard. “You live with Ma,” she forces out. It had been a shock to hear her voice earlier, sounding so  _ ordinary _ . Talking about Mom like she hadn’t been the one to break their hearts. Hope might see this as a harmless switch, a way for them to meet their other mothers. Henry is still furious at Emma, and finding out about a secret sister has only made her angrier. 

She isn’t going to forgive her so quickly, but Hope doesn’t need to know that. She doesn’t want to fight with Hope anymore. “She’s Snow White’s daughter,” she says. “Snow used to make all these  _ comments  _ whenever she’d visit Mom. About how lonely it is to be an only child and how I needed more friends my age.”

Hope leans forward. “I bet she’d help us–”

Henry shakes her head vigorously. “Snow White can’t keep a secret. Everyone knows that.” She returns to where she’s been painstakingly drawing out a family tree for Hope. “So Mom’s mother was named Cora and her father was named Henry–” 

“She couldn’t name you Cora?” Hope demands. “She had to name you  _ Henrietta _ ?” 

“Shut it.” Henry swats at her. “Cora had another daughter named Zelena. That’s my Aunt Zelena. Sometimes she calls herself Auntie Z, but I never do, because it’s stupid. She has a daughter named Robin who’s fifteen. We used to be super close when we were little, but she…outgrew me, I guess.” She frowns. “She says I’m boring.” 

Hope pokes her side. “You’re good at pretending to be boring,” she says, and she grins at Henry. “Lulls your enemies into a false sense of security.” Henry exhales, already very fond of this stubborn, chaotic sister she’s found. “Aunt Zelena is the one who teaches me magic. And you should learn some of that.” 

So they practice magic, and Hope mimics Henry’s mumbling until Henry is confident that she can throw up a good shield. “You’re going to have a  _ lot  _ of assassins trying to kill you,” she reminds Hope. “The important thing is to keep in mind that you’re protecting them from Mom. The sooner you chase them off, the better.” 

“What happens if Mom gets to the assassins?” Hope asks curiously.

Henry shivers. “Bad things. Mom gets angry. Really angry.” She doesn’t want to explain Mom’s rage to Hope, doesn’t want Hope to get the wrong idea. Mom is  _ amazing _ , is so loving and gentle and supportive around Henry. And she’s an excellent mayor of Storybrooke, too. The rage that thrums beneath the surface is the kind that could stay there forever without any release, and they’d all be fine with it. 

But Mom when that rage is unleashed is someone else, someone frightening. Henry huddles behind her and watches her untamed, raging, deadly. At the end, there is Mom again, holding her and kissing her sweetly, but Henry shivers when she remembers the way that Mom is transformed. “It’s just never a good idea to let Mom face someone who’s trying to hurt you.” 

Hope is staring at her with an expression that implies that she would enjoy watching that very much, and Henry winces. “You know, I know we’re not biologically related to our families– except maybe each other, kind of– but are you  _ sure  _ you’re not related to Aunt Zelena?”

Hope looks perplexed. Henry sighs. “Never mind. Let’s do floor plans.” They diagram the layouts of their houses and their routes to school after the summer, and then they try on each other’s clothes. When Henry stares at herself in the mirror, she hardly recognizes the girl she sees. 

Or, well, she looks exactly like Hope. “Wow,” she breathes, then she tries, “Whoa.”  _ Whoa  _ feels more like Hope. She tries out a little slouch and marvels at how confident it looks, how relaxed. 

“Looking good, Mills,” Hope says, slapping a hand on her back. She’s wearing a prim sweater and a skirt, and she widens her eyes and tangles her fingers in her hair like she’s reaching for her braid. Henry gapes. “I was the star of the school play last year,” Hope says, and her face transforms in an instant back to Hope. “Then a bunch of us broke into the costume closet after the show and tried on all the outfits and we got blacklisted from the drama club. It was kind of dorky, anyway. Not as awesome as track.” She grins. “But fun. I’m gonna own this thing.” 

“I’m sure you will,” Henry says, still spellbound at her image in the mirror. Mom isn’t going to know what hit her.

The next day, they go on the trip to Neverland and duck away at dinner to review some more. Henry quizzes Hope on her life until they’re both exhausted, and Hope slumps across Henry’s lap and plays video games on a handheld device while Henry looks through Hope’s pictures.

There’s the one of Mom, looking so happy that Henry’s breath quickens, and there are a few of Snow and David with their faces pressed to a cherub-faced Hope. There are some of friends, kids with Hope who look to be her age. Hope, it seems, has no problem making friends. 

And there’s at least a dozen pictures of Emma, one after the other. In some she’s with Hope, wearing goofy glasses or making fish faces or with Emma’s lips pressed to Hope’s cheek. In others, it’s just Emma, and not the Emma that Henry knows.

Henry has only had one picture of Emma in her frame, though she knows that Mom has lots more. It’s also from the wedding, but it’s Mom with Emma, the two of them standing together with Mom’s arms around Emma. It had been posed and had looked sweet but unremarkable, like two happy people who had someday become unhappy.

Emma hadn’t looked like a person, like someone silly and fun. In Hope’s pictures, she’s beaming at the camera like she’s overwhelmed with affection for the picture taker. There is a strange quality to her, a perpetual sense of movement where even the still photos feel like they’re on the verge of motion. She’s restless, Henry knows immediately. She’s uncomfortable with the camera. 

Henry had imagined her as…bland, really. Sweet and heroic like Snow and David without being very exciting. All of Mom’s stories had made her out to be some kind of grand hero, larger than life and perfect. Not the woman lying flat on her back in the center of a kitchen floor with her eyes rolled and her face twisted into a smirk as Hope makes the same face beside her. 

“That’s her imitation Hope face,” Hope says, rolling her own eyes. “It’s from last year on Ma’s birthday. We kept daring each other to eat more until we couldn’t  _ stand _ .” She grins. “Ma’s crap at cooking, so we get tons of takeout. But she really wants to be able to cook because she never had a mom to cook for her when she was little. She just isn’t patient enough to follow recipes, so she dumps tons of stuff into a frying pan and sautes it for hours. Lots of flops, but she’s also made some amazing food. That was a good day.” She sounds wistful. “I’ve never gone this long without seeing her. And now it’s going to be even longer.” 

“Mom cooks every dinner,” Henry says, and she misses Mom desperately, longs for her food and her smile across the table. “I usually get Granny’s for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch, but dinner is always Mom’s. There was one time when she got home late and I made myself a sandwich and I thought she was going to cry. She’s always afraid that her job will keep her away from me, but it’s like…” Henry shakes her head. “I don’t  _ need  _ to be tucked in every night. I’m twelve. I can do my homework alone, too.” Mom can be overprotective, but Henry senses that she needs it more than Henry does, to feel like she’s doing right by her. “There’s a whole world out there waiting for her, but family always comes first.” 

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Hope says, staring at the picture that Henry has hesitated on, the one of Mom at the wedding. “I hope she doesn’t hate me. I’m not all smart and polished like you.”

“You’re plenty smart,” Henry says. “Scary smart,” she amends, because Hope is kind of terrifying when she’s got a plan. “And she’ll love you. You’re basically her  _ daughter _ .” 

“Yeah.” Hope looks troubled, and Henry squeezes her hand. She isn’t worried about Emma liking her. She doesn’t care what Emma thinks of her at all, Emma who had left Mom and Henry and never looked back.

Still, the image of the woman in the photos lingers in her mind, and she’s left uncertain.

* * *

It’s surprising how much Hope enjoys the rest of the program, even with the impending plan taking up so much of her brainpower. During the day, she gapes at magical creatures and hikes through impossible forests and meets people who should only exist in stories. At night, she curls up beside Henry and they run through every last bit of how they can best pass as each other.

She can’t wait to meet Mom. The program is wrapping up, and they’re getting closer to the date when they’ll make the switch. Henry is still getting weird whenever Ma comes up, but she looks at Hope’s pictures again and again like they hold the secret to Ma, like they might make all her doubts fade away. And Hope flips greedily through Henry’s pictures, drinking in every image of the mother she’s never gotten to meet.

On the morning they’re scheduled to return to Boston, Hope practices some of Henry’s magic with her, both of them yawning and buzzing with anticipation. It isn’t until there’s a rap on their door and a call of “Five minutes!” before it hits Hope that it isn’t just Ma she won’t see for the duration of their switch. 

They stare at each other, their eyes wide, and then Hope is hugging Henry as tightly as she can. Henry squeezes her back, burying her face in Hope’s shoulder, and Hope swallows. “I’m going to miss you,” she says shakily. “A lot more than I ever thought I would when I met you.” 

“We’ll keep in touch,” Henry promises. “Take this.” She digs through Hope’s suitcase and produces a handheld mirror that she passes to Hope. “Just hold it up and whisper my name into it and it’ll call me. Much easier than a phone.” 

Hope handles it gingerly. “This works for anyone with one of these mirrors?” She eyes it speculatively, then leans over and says clearly, “Emma Swan.”

Henry looks scandalized. “ _ Hope! _ ” But the screen flickers like it’s heard her, and Hope waits– but nothing happens. “She must have one,” Henry says, subdued. “But I don’t think she keeps it on her.”

“Oh, well. Worth a try.” Hope shrugs and moves to tuck the mirror into her pocket. But she doesn’t have a pocket. She’s wearing a  _ skirt _ . She shudders and pulls on Hope’s absurd, too-thick-for-summer coat, sticking the mirror into it instead. “Ready?” 

“Ready,” Henry says bravely, mustering up a smile, and they walk out to the reception room together. 

They split up as soon as they enter the room, wandering to opposite sides of the room while they keep an eye out for their mothers. Hope wants Ma to be first, to catch sight of her before she leaves– but it’s Mayor Mills–  _ Mom _ – who is already striding through the door, casting a glance around the room before her eyes fall on Hope. 

For the first time since Hope had come up with this plan, she feels abruptly timid. The Queen of the Realms is walking toward her, and Hope is briefly in awe, is caught up in a wave of longing so strong that she moves forward before she can think about it. She breaks into a run, and Mom pulls her into her arms and spins with her, laughing with relief and a few choked tears. “Henrietta,” she murmurs into Hope’s ear. “My darling. It has been a long two weeks.” 

“Feels like forever,” Hope says, clinging to her, and maybe it’s just that she’s halfway in Henry’s skin that makes her cry so easily. Or maybe it’s been so long, and she’s been waiting for this moment for an eternity. Mom is the wedding picture brought to life, the sparkling energy of a woman Hope already knows she’s going to love for the rest of her life.

Mom presses her lips to Hope’s hair, and she sounds a bit bemused as she says, “What happened to your hair?” 

“I was ready for a change.” Hope tangles her hand in her hair, and she glances back at the crowd of kids and catches sight of Henry for a moment, her eyes wide with panic.  _ Oh, crap _ . When she twists around, she sees, in the doorway behind Mom, Ma has arrived. “I want to show you something,” Hope says hastily, grabbing Mom’s hand and pulling her toward the window. “Look at that!” She points vaguely.

Mom says, sounding very puzzled, “It’s a…really nice city bus?” 

“Isn’t it?” Hope peeks back out at Ma. She’s past them now, and she’s caught sight of Henry in the crowd.  _ Good _ . “Anyway, let’s get out of here. I don’t want to spend another second with these immature children.” She puts on a voice like Henry’s, and Mom casts her another bemused glance. 

“Your wish is my command,” she says lightly, and they vanish together in a puff of magic.

Hope is taken aback by it, the easy magic and the sudden teleportation, and she coughs, choking on the smoke for a moment. Mom pats her on the back, looking alarmed. “That’s never happened before. Are you all right?” 

“Totally. The best I’ve ever been,” Hope promises her. “Just…you know. Got used to all the fresh air from the program.” She takes a breath, clears her lungs a little, and stares at a foyer she’s seen only in Henry’s pictures. 

She’s in.

* * *

There is a brief moment when Henry prepares to whirl around and run for Mom, rather than to face Emma.  _ Ma _ , Hope insists that she should think of her. The woman who had left them and separated her from her sister. Henry has prepared a hex for this moment, has sharpened it even as she and Hope have practiced to pass as each other. It’s a nasty little piece of work, a charm that she’s set to cause a sharp clenching in Emma’s heart every time the word _ family  _ is spoken in her presence. It’ll feel like a heart attack, and it’ll pass so quickly that she’ll never be able to prove it.

Sure, Emma sounds like she has second thoughts, and Henry is enough of a hopeless romantic that she wants to reunite Mom with the woman she still loves. But none of that excuses her  _ leaving _ . She could have stayed. She could have tried. Henry knows that it can’t be Mom’s fault that it ended because Mom, like, worships the ground that Emma walks on. She’d have never let her go unless Emma had been the one to go.

Emma needs to hurt like Mom hurts. Like Henry hurts, living in a house with a phantom of a woman who is long gone. How could Emma just…?

And there she is, hurrying toward Henry with her face open and bright, and Henry takes a deep breath and prepares to whisper her hex. The words don’t come immediately, and Henry struggles to remember them, to speak them into being. But she can’t. She can’t say the words, and she doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the lump in her throat, stopping any whispers, and she swallows past it and blinks hard and prepares the words again.

She’s one syllable into the hex when Emma reaches her and says, her face flooded with unabashed love, “Hey, kiddo,” and Henry bursts into ugly, sobbing tears. 

Her own chest is the one that feels like it might explode, like it’s holding more than her fragile heart can hold. She’s supposed to be angry, to be as vengeful as Mom can be when someone hurts Henry, but she can’t seem to stopper the flood of grief that is pouring from her.

And then: Ma lifts her up into her arms like Henry isn’t twelve but a small child, and she holds her tightly to her. “It’s okay,” Ma murmurs. “It’s okay. I’m here.” Her voice is shaky like she might be holding back some tears of her own, and Henry buries her face in Ma’s shoulder and trembles with new sobs, with twelve years of anger that have only been sorrow, disguised.

* * *

Hope has been…odd. She walks differently, a little taller and as though she has to remember to slouch, and Emma watches her with curiosity. It’s the first time that Hope has ever been on her own, and it makes sense that it might have changed her. She smiles differently now, her eyes tinged with uncertainty, and she clings to Emma more easily. 

Emma doesn’t mind  _ that _ . Hope would have accused her of being a hopeless sap ( _ I’m always a sap when I’m Hope-less _ , Emma would retort, and then she’d have to put a dollar in the Hope Pun Penalty Jar), but it’s nice to have Hope holding her hand as they step through the portal to Chicago and weave through the parking lot. Two weeks apart have made her ache for Hope when she’d been young and only Emma’s, before she’d ventured out into the world alone.

Hope is staring at the Bug, and Emma says, “Hope?” 

“It looks just like the pictures,” Hope says, sounding awed. 

Emma snorts. “Yes, I didn’t total the Bug in the past two weeks. I  _ can  _ handle myself without you, you know. Not  _ well _ – I did eat chips for dinner twice this week– but I think I can manage the car.” 

“Chips for dinner?” Hope looks appalled. “That’s not  _ food _ .” Then, a moment later, “Did you finish them all?” She sounds hopeful, and Emma laughs. 

“I got ice cream this morning,” she says. “Figured we’d make milkshakes at home. Celebrate your triumphant return from realm-hopping.” She looks sidelong at Hope. “How was your trip?” 

Hope had sounded breathlessly enthusiastic on the phone, had recounted every day with so much wonder, and Emma had been sure that it would be only a matter of time before Hope would broach the topic of realm-hopping. But now, she smiles half-heartedly and says, “It was illuminating. I made some friends.” 

“I’m shocked,” Emma says dryly. Hope has never had any difficulty finding partners in crime. “Did you go anywhere interesting?” 

“Camelot was really beautiful,” Hope says, and Emma manages a smile. The last time she’d been in Camelot, she’d been the Dark One, fighting her worst impulses and losing more often than not. “And we went hiking in Neverland at night, which was  _ terrifying _ .” She doesn’t sound nearly as excited about that as Emma would expect her to be, which is just fine. Emma had seen the planned trip to Neverland and had nearly turned away.

“I was in Neverland once,” she says. “Was kidnapped, actually. Peter Pan wanted to turn me into his Wendy.” 

Hope looks confused, and Emma wonders if she’s really never shown the kid  _ Peter Pan _ . “Really, he wanted to channel some of my magic and use me to power the realm. My parents and…and others came to save me.” 

“Others,” Hope repeats, and her eyes are penetrating. “Like  _ her _ ?”

Emma shrugs uncomfortably. Moments come back to her in a rush, Regina’s eyes flashing as she’d faced down Peter Pan and the instant that they’d moved the moon together to escape. Regina had been badly injured by the fight, and Emma had been left whispering  _ why?  _ to her in a cabin of the Jolly Roger, curled up beside her on the bed in a secret moment.

_ You know why _ , Regina had whispered, and Emma had leaned in to kiss her just as Snow had pushed the door open and seen them.

It had been…bad. They’d had a quiet affair during the curse, fury and attraction culminating in closets and late-night meetings, but Emma had been too furious and heartbroken after they’d broken the curse to reconcile with Regina. The overtures had been tentative– an invitation to Granny’s after Emma had come back from the portal and their joined power to destroy the trigger– but they had marinated in heartbreak, had kept a safe distance from each other until then. 

And Snow had been horror-stricken– so much so that she hadn’t noticed that her husband had been acting oddly until Pan-in-David had retrieved the curse from a weakened Regina and had set it into motion, catapulting them back into the Enchanted Forest. Regina had expended the last energy she’d had to fight Pan and keep their memories, and Emma had expended the last bit of goodwill that she’d had to watch over Regina when she’d been sick after. 

Emma had been fearful of losing her family, and she’d gone off wandering with Hook most of the time instead of lingering near Regina as the other woman had healed. When she’d returned, Snow had become Regina’s most ardent supporter, Regina had a man beside her in Emma’s place, and Emma had turned to Hook in bitter regret.

Neverland had been the place where it had all begun, and she doesn’t know which part of it fills her with the most dread– the days spent in the dark, certain that no one would ever find her, or the way everything had unraveled for Regina and her for years after it.

And now, as Hope looks at her expectantly and says, “What’s your favorite realm?” Emma can’t think of a single one that hadn’t held some pain for her.

“Oh,” she says suddenly, and she knows which it is. “The Wish Realm. Where I found you. That’s my favorite.” 

Hope gives her an aggrieved look. “That’s boring.” 

“It’s true.” Emma smiles, remembering it. “I wished it into being, did you know that? Wished upon a genie that I’d never been– that a lot of things hadn’t happened. And then I forgot my whole life for a little while. I was a princess who’d grown up without getting all tough and strong–” And she flexes her muscles and is pleasantly surprised when Hope looks impressed instead of rolling her eyes. “–And my parents were still king and queen. I was a  _ mess _ , but it was…” She hesitates, remembering now that the memories are bittersweet. “It had some happy memories.” 

“Memories about her?” Hope prods. Emma frowns. Hope is usually a little more attuned to Emma’s reluctance to speak about Regina. Then again, she’d been asking questions on the phone, too. Maybe it’s just that all this time in the realms has awakened her curiosity.

“You know that she isn’t your mother, right?” she says gently. The one thing that she’d never wanted Hope to feel is  _ abandoned _ , like she’d been left behind by someone who could have been her mother. She’d always been firm on that. Regina is a part of Emma’s past before Hope. Not a part of  _ them _ . 

Hope shrugs. “It just seems like you had such a beautiful love story,” she says, subdued. “And then it fell apart. Don’t you think about her sometimes? What if she has– what if she has a family out there, too? Wouldn’t you want to know–?” She stops abruptly, biting her lip and looking away. 

Emma’s hands tremble on the steering wheel. “Kid,” she says, and her voice is unsteady, ragged with grief that she can’t name. “Of course I’d want to–” She can’t think of Regina and Henrietta, of a family she doesn’t have with her. Hope is still watching her, eyes sharp and waiting, and Emma pulls into the garage under their apartment building and tries to find the words. 

“She was very important to me,” she says finally, wheeling Hope’s suitcase to the elevator. “And I’m sure that any family she has would be important to me, too. Because I…I’ve really only ever wanted her to be happy. But we didn’t make each other happy, kid. That’s why all the best stories are just stories. The real ones don’t always have happy endings. And we have to accept that instead of waiting around for it.” 

Hope follows her silently from the elevator, peering around the hall like it’s been a lot longer than two weeks since she’s seen it. Emma had really underestimated her homesickness. “That’s why I started seeing someone last week,” Emma reminds her. 

Hope stops, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Like a therapist?” 

Emma snorts. “Like the guy I told you about,” she reminds Hope, and she pushes open the door and sighs. Hook, as always, does not grasp the word  _ no _ –  _ no, I don’t want you coming by today _ ,  _ no, I don’t think it’s past time for you to meet my daughter _ ,  _ no, don’t break into my apartment _ – and he’s lounging on the couch when they enter, scooping ice cream straight from the tub as he watches TV. A terrible first impression for Hope, of  _ course _ .

“Hook,” Emma says in exasperation, and she turns to Hope, fully prepared to ignore him. “Come on. Let’s get you unpacked before this bag sits out for the next month–”

But Hope is still standing in the doorway, stock-still as she glares in fury at the man on the couch.


	4. Chapter 4

“Ah, yes, the daughter,” Hook drawls, winking at Hope. Hope is still staring at him, her eyes narrowed and her breath coming in rapid pants. Emma looks between them in concern, grimacing at the situation. “I’ll have you know that I gave her special attention on my ship. I knew she was yours from the start. Same spark.” 

Hope glowers at him, her chin lifting in haughty disdain. Emma is, abruptly, reminded of Regina. Regina would  _ love _ to hear that Emma’s own daughter hates Hook on sight, and she swallows past the pain that comes with knowing that she’ll never be able to tell Regina about it. “You gave me  _ special attention  _ on the ship?” she echoes. “On the Jolly Roger?” 

“Of course. I was subtle about it, though. Didn’t want all the other kiddies to get jealous.” He smirks at Hope, clearly missing the waves of distaste emanating off of her. “Kept a special eye on you.”

Hope’s little jaw works, and she controls herself with admirable– and very uncharacteristic– willpower. “I suppose you didn’t mind when I set the mast on fire,” she says, voice like steel.

Emma raises her eyebrows. Hook blinks. “Ah…not at all,” he says glibly. “I know how girls can be on the rag.” 

“It was pretty humiliating for you when your pants caught fire and you fell into the ocean,” Hope agrees coolly. “And I truly thought that a pirate would know how to swim, rather than be saved by a twelve-year-old girl. Suppose you’re too busy attacking innocents and committing atrocities.” 

Hook is beginning to look trapped. “Well,” he says, his smirk like a rictus grin. “I should have known that a daughter of my fiancée would be as much of a spitfire as her mother.”

“ _ Fiancée _ ?” Emma and Hope say it at once, with equal disbelief, and Emma glances at Hope and sees her face turn startled, then visibly relieved. Emma clears her throat. “Hook…Killian.” It has always been an effort to call him by his name, even when she’d  _ actually  _ been engaged to him. He is so much a  _ character _ at times that it is difficult to find a person beneath the bluster. “We’re not engaged.” 

Hope exhales, her hands still shaking. Hook says, “Of course we are. Don’t you remember the ring? The engagement? The wedding dress–” 

“Fourteen years ago!” Emma says, taking a step back. That wedding dress had been like something from a nunnery, but Snow had cried when she’d seen it and Emma had felt, for a few minutes, like this really had been the path that she’d been supposed to be on.

Regina had torn it off with her  _ teeth _ , which is a memory that still makes Emma swallow hard.

“Well, yes, but we never broke it off,” Hook points out, spreading his hand and his hook as though he’s made a salient point.

Emma stares at him. She’s beginning to remember what it is that had always made her feel like she was being swept away by Hook, caught in an undertow and struggling to regain control. “I climbed out a window at Granny’s and eloped with someone else,” she reminds him.

“And never once told me that the wedding was off.” Hook smiles at her as though she’s finally gotten it. “I took it as a postponement. It’s not as though that other marriage took–” 

Hope mutters something under her breath, and to Emma’s alarm, a spark of electric energy erupts from beneath Hook. “Argh!” He jumps up, clutching his ass, and Hope grinds her jaw and glares at him. 

What the  _ hell _ ?

Emma says, “Hook, I think it’s time you stepped out.” The ice cream is empty, of course, the hope of milkshakes gone, and she feels the old weariness instead of outrage at Hook’s presence returning. He finally leaves, and Emma rounds on Hope. “Someone taught you  _ magic  _ on the program?” 

Hope looks trapped. “Just a little,” she protests. “It’s harmless–” 

Emma can’t imagine what child or adult would meet Hope Swan and think,  _ oh, yes, what this demure and well-behaved child needs is the ability to do magic _ . “You just used it to attack a man!” 

“He deserved much worse,” Hope says furiously. “How dare he– and you’re  _ dating  _ him? You’re really dating him?” 

“Also–” Emma points a finger on her. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you played hooky on at least one of the days of your program–” 

Hope wheels around. “I need to call my roommate,” she says wildly. 

“What?” Emma is taken aback at the sudden shift in conversation. “Now?” 

Hope looks sharply at her, her eyes burning hot. Emma hasn’t dated much in the past twelve years– mostly casual dating that had never amounted to anything, and definitely not anyone who she’d introduce to Hope. She’s beginning to think that that was a good call. Hope is usually so good at shrugging off and mocking the things she hates, and this unfettered anger is very unlike her. 

A surge of guilt. “I thought we could…well, I guess no milkshakes, but I could whip something up, and I took the day off–” She wets her lips. “Now?” she says again.

Hope stares incredulously at her. “I am clearly in distress!” she says, and my  _ god _ , this trip has transformed Hope. “Yes, now!” And she storms into the linen closet and gets a faceful of towel, backtracks, and storms into the bathroom beside it instead.

The door slams, and Emma is left in bemused and slightly concerned silence. 

* * *

_ Storybrooke _ . Henry’s room is like a marvel of revelation, the kind of place that Hope has only ever dreamed of. There are dozens of pictures on the walls– pictures of fairytale castles and underwater empires, of Mom and Henry over a dozen years of travel and togetherness. When Hope looks out the window, she can see the portal stations and the Town Hall castle rising above them, and then distant worlds connected seamlessly into the distance. Ma might downplay Storybrooke, but this is  _ amazing _ .

The best part of Storybrooke, though, is the woman sitting next to her on the bed, refolding every shirt that Hope has tried to fold. “This is good for me,” Mom says wryly. “I’ve always thought that your shirt folding was something I’d never measure up to. You could use a little more sloppiness in your life.” She’s smiling at Hope, her eyes warm and a little sad, and Hope wonders if she’s thinking about Ma, who is definitely the sloppiest person Hope’s ever known. 

She needn’t have wondered. Ma is reluctant to discuss Mom unless pushed, but Mom offers information freely. “Emma was always…oh, she  _ tried _ , but she just had too much going on to remember to be tidy. Clothes would just find themselves in mounds,” Mom says, and she smiles that heartbreakingly sad smile. “And then she’d clean up in a fit of productivity and it’d keep for about a day. But she always accused me of being too rigid.” She laughs. “I think she’d be a little afraid of you.” 

“Everyone should be a little afraid of me,” Hope says smugly, and Mom lets out a startled laugh. Hope blinks, trying to remember to be more  _ Henry _ . “After all,” she says, straightening. “If I’m to be Mayor Mills the Second, Queen of the Realms, someday, then I’m going to have to be feared and respected.” 

Mom gives her an odd look. “Did you just put on a British accent?” She shakes her head. “I knew you’d been spending too much time with Zelena.” 

Hope mentally high-fives herself for dodging that bullet. Mom says briskly, “Well, she’ll be here soon. She insisted that we have a family brunch at Granny’s to celebrate your return and then promptly informed me that Robin won’t be coming and she’ll be bringing a date instead, so I have no idea what she’s up to, but I’m sure it’ll be memorable.” 

Henry had described Zelena as  _ like you but weirder _ to Hope. Hope says, “Isn’t brunch with Auntie Z always?” 

She practices walking like Henry a’s they head down the street, shoulders back and head high. Storybrooke has a gaggle of local stores down their Main Street, like a pretend town from some kind of old-timey movie. Hope hadn’t thought places without shopping centers were real unless they were, like, farms in the middle of nowhere. 

And everyone seems to know her. “Henry!” exclaims a man sitting on a bench with a Dalmatian. “How was your trip?” 

“Love the hair, Henry,” smiles a woman lingering outside an ice cream shop. 

Everyone has something to say to her, and Hope is beginning to get an uneasy feeling, like this is a royal court and she’s leading a procession. This is Henry’s bit, not hers, and she’s not nearly as good at faking it. 

It’s a relief when they make it to a building emblazoned with  _ Granny’s Diner _ and are met by a woman that Hope recognizes from Henry’s pictures. “There’s my  _ adorable  _ little niece,” Zelena says, swooping down to wrap her arms around her. “Hope–” 

“What?” Hope says, horrified.

“–fully you’ve had a magnificent time on your little program,” Zelena finishes, and Hope eyes her in confused relief. Had that been a protracted gap between the first and second half of the word, or is she imagining things? “I thought the entire thing was idiotic.” She scoffs. “Our Henry, wandering a dozen worlds she’s already visited?” 

“You thought it was idiotic?” Mom stares at Zelena. “You suggested the program to me. You said it would be the best thing that ever happened to Henry.” 

Zelena smiles brightly. “Was I wrong?” she says, sliding an arm around Hope’s shoulders. Hope tries to wriggle away, and Zelena pinches her shoulder in response. 

Mom peers around. “Didn’t you say you were bringing a date?” 

“Oh, she’s stabling her horse.” Zelena looks very pleased about this tidbit. “It’s  _ so  _ pretentious, the way that she insists on riding through portals with it. I once created tornadoes with my mind alone, and now I’m forced to sit on a horse, clinging to a beautiful woman, my hair streaming behind me like I’m on the cover of one of those ridiculous romance novels you keep hidden in the ottoman in your office–”

Mom’s eyes could cut diamonds. Hope decides that she likes Aunt Zelena very much. “Sounds like you hate it,” she says cheerfully. 

“ _ So  _ tiresome,” Zelena drawls. “I can only Hope–” She stops.

Hope blinks, yanking herself away from Zelena to study her suspiciously. “–That she’ll start traveling more sensibly,” Zelena concludes. “Now, what are you treating me to today, Regina?” 

Mom slips her hand in Hope’s, a quiet movement as though she can sense the agitation from Hope that she can’t possibly understand, and she says, “It’s Henry’s choice.” 

Hope squeezes Mom’s hand. “Are there milkshakes?”

“There are always milkshakes,” Mom says, grinning at her, and they walk into the diner together. Henry has coached Hope on Granny’s, has gone through her usual burger order and drawn a floor plan to show their usual booth here. Hope strides right to it as Mom orders, and Zelena slides into the seat opposite Hope. 

Hope eyes her again. “So, uh…we went to Oz,” she tries. 

Zelena scoffs. “The boring part,” she says. “The Emerald City. A glorified mall with a color scheme. What else did you do? Play Hope–” Another long pause. “Scotch with some munchkins?” 

“Okay, hopscotch isn’t even  _ pronounced  _ like that,” Hope says, staring at her. “What–” 

They’re interrupted by Mom, returning from the counter with a tray in hand. “Burgers, fries, and four milkshakes,” she announces. “Does your date want anything else?” 

“She can order for herself, Regina, she’s a big girl,” Zelena says. “Did you get me one of those little cups of ketchup? I like the ones with extra ketchup.” She snatches it, and Mom slides in next to Hope, who is still staring at Zelena.

“She takes some time to get used to when you’ve been away a while,” Mom says, nudging Hope in solidarity. “Try your burger. You know, I gave Granny my secret sauce recipe so her burgers would be more flavorful–” She takes a bite and makes a face. “Well, she’s getting there.”

Hope takes a bite and her mouth erupts in fire. Her eyes round, her throat closes up, and she chokes, spitting out the piece of burger. “Henry!” Mom looks at her in disapproval. “I know it’s a little bland, but at least use your napkin–” 

“It’d be so  _ rude  _ for Henry not to finish it when Granny put in all that work,” Zelena says. She isn’t eating her burger. She’s sitting up, leaning her chin against the back of her fingers with her elbow on the table, and there is a positively diabolical smile on her face. “I would Hope–” 

Mom eyes Zelena curiously. “You would hope what?” 

“–that Henry was more polite than that,” Zelena finishes at last. Hope glares at her, simultaneously horrified and delighted. Zelena offers her a hideously exaggerated wink. Hope takes a breath, biting into another bit of burger and chewing rapidly. With some milkshake, she can finally keep it down. 

“Stop,” Mom says commandingly, and Hope freezes. But Mom doesn’t look angry, just alarmed. “You don’t need to finish anything if you don’t like it, sweetheart. I’ll get you some apple pie.” 

She rises, heading to the counter again, and Zelena says, “Ah, here’s my date!” 

Hope turns. Hope freezes. Walking through the door is  _ Mulan _ , resident chaperone to her program and the only person in this town who might know that there had been twins on the trip. She sees Hope and looks as though she’s steeling herself for outrage. 

She is  _ right _ . “You told her!” Hope says in dismay, jabbing a finger at Zelena. “You know!” 

“Keep it down, little birdie,” Zelena says reprovingly, and she gets up and drags Mulan with her toward the back hall of the diner, gesturing for Hope to follow. “Mulan didn’t  _ tell me _ ,” Zelena says with disgust. “This is  _ my  _ pet project. Why do you think she was there in the first place?” 

“Don’t worry,” Mulan says dryly. “I didn’t know why, either. Not until I saw Zelena’s rooming assignments.” 

Zelena waves a hand. “I talked Regina’s office into arranging this trip in the first place.”

Hope gapes at her. “What about my essay?” she thinks to ask, which is surprisingly Henry-esque of her.

“I’m sure it was lovely,” Zelena says, dismissive. “We can frame it someday or read it at the wedding, I don’t care. Or the funeral,” she says thoughtfully. “I still don’t know how this will end.” She claps her hands together. “But isn’t it  _ fun _ ?”

“Why…?” Hope’s voice trails off. Whatever reason Zelena gives, Hope is pretty sure that the answer to  _ why  _ is just  _ because chaos _ , and she isn’t going to question it. “Why–?” she says again, and then she feels it.

Something is buzzing in her coat pocket, and Hope digs out the mirror that Henry had given her and flips it open. Henry is at the other end, her eyes wild. “Hey,” Hope says brightly. “What’s going on?” 

“You  _ knew  _ that Ma was dating someone?” Henry whispers furiously. “You lied to me! You said this would be in the bag!”

“It  _ is  _ in the bag,” Hope says, shrugging. “So she’s dating someone. Who cares? It’s not like it’s  _ Mom _ . Just split them up.” 

“Just split them up?” Henry echoes, her eyes flashing. “Just like  _ that _ ? I am not doing this. We have to switch back right now. I am not being stuck in Chicago with a smelly pirate for another day.” 

“Relax,” Hope says, and she can feel the sudden alarm at leaving already, at losing her only chance to know Mom and Storybrooke and even Zelena. “It’s totally fine. You’ve got this.” 

“I need help!” Henry says desperately. “I barely know Ma. How am I supposed to convince her–” 

“Oh, man,” Hope says, shaking the mirror. “I think we’re going through a tunnel or something. You keep fading in and out.” 

“This is a video call! You’re at Granny’s!” Henry sputters. “Aunt Zelena is standing  _ literally  _ right behind you!” 

“Hello, munchkin,” Zelena says cheerily. “Enjoying Chicago?” 

Hope shakes the mirror a little harder. “Hope!” Henry says, outraged. 

“Henry?” Hope says, injecting some confusion into her voice. “Henry, are you still there?” She snaps the mirror closed and turns back to Zelena, who is looking at her with the kind of pride that should probably be alarming.

She shrugs it off. Henry will work out the pirate thing. “So you did all of this because it’s fun?” she says finally. “What took you so long?” 

“Ugh.” Zelena makes a face. “Well, I tried that bit with the kidnapping at Henry’s preschool, but Regina put a stop to it before I could get you, too. And then there was that incident at the Cincinnati Zoo when you were six–” 

“I was  _ at  _ the Cincinnati Zoo when I was six.” Hope remembers the zoo, but Ma still talks about the baffling moment when they’d walked into a store at a rest stop and been awarded the tickets for being the millionth customer.

“Well, so were Regina and Henry before there was a silly little explosion in the Land of Untold Stories that killed thirty and dragged them away,” Zelena sniffs. Hope’s head is spinning. “I spent a good month about three years ago calling Emma repeatedly and informing her that she’d won a fully paid trip to New York before she had her mother come visit me and tell me to stop trying to con her. I was  _ going _ to bring you. I was just going to orchestrate a mild car crash with Regina’s caravan of cars.” 

“Why are all your plans so destructive?” Mulan asks tiredly.

“They’re  _ exciting _ ,” Zelena corrects her. “Excellent entertainment.” She spreads her hands. “And here you are, little birdie. Come and give your Auntie Z a big hug.” 

And this time, Hope startles herself with how swiftly she buries herself in Zelena’s arms. Zelena knows who she is, and it’s a relief to have someone on her side here, someone who has wanted this reunion as much as Hope does. 

This is perfect. And now that Hope is here with half her family, and the other half veering closer and closer to her, she’s never going to give it up.

* * *

After an appropriate period of time in which Emma putters in the kitchen and attempts to give Hope some privacy, she finds Hope in her room, unfolding and folding each of her shirts with startling precision. They’re nearly flat, stacked on the rumpled bedspread and color coded, and Emma says, “They taught you that on the program?” 

“My roommate did,” Hope says listlessly. She doesn’t look up.

“The famous roommate. Someday, I’m going to have to meet that girl. Where is she from?” Hope just shrugs and folds another shirt, and Emma sits down next to her and folds the shirts, too. She pretends not to notice when Hope takes her shirts and refolds them. 

“I did warn you I was going on that date,” Emma reminds her. “And there have been a few more since. He’s…he’s always been a good friend to hang out with. Even when we weren’t together.” 

“You almost  _ married  _ him,” Hope says, and her eyes are red and sullen. “Don’t tell me he’s just a friend.”

“He isn’t just a friend,” Emma says grudgingly. And she feels guilty again– guilty at Hope’s distress, at how odd she’s acting because of this, even guilt at how  _ Regina  _ would feel about her dating Hook– but…god. “Is it so bad that I just don’t want to be alone anymore?” she asks tentatively. “I have you– of  _ course  _ I have you– but I don’t want that to keep you from growing up. From dating and exploring the world and just…I wouldn’t mind having a partner in all of this, you know?”

Hope is silent, pensive like she so rarely is, and when she speaks, it’s wet and uncertain. “What about my– what about  _ her _ ? Couldn’t you just be with her again?” 

“You don’t even know her,” Emma says lightly, and Hope stares blankly at the shirt she’s folding. “I know that you’ve decided that she’s the lesser of two evils here, but I can tell you that between her and Hook, only one of them would enforce a curfew for you and make you eat your vegetables.” Hope shrugs, a preteen sulk, and Emma says, “If you want to hate him, that’s okay. But I think you might be surprised. He grows on you.” 

“So does toe fungus,” Hope mutters, and Emma quirks a grin. 

“Honestly, when I met Hook, I thought he was a repulsive, misogynistic jerk,” she admits. 

Hope raises her eyebrows. “So you had taste. And now?” 

“Well, I don’t think he’s repulsive,” Emma says thoughtfully. “He can be endearing sometimes.” Not always, and Emma finds herself wondering, more often than not, if she’s just falling into old patterns. But it has been nice to have someone with her, someone who knows her history and doesn’t push her too hard in any way that matters.

Hope snorts, her chin going high again. “I think squirrels are endearing sometimes, too, but I’m not going to invite them into my house to eat my ice cream,” she says crisply, and Emma looks at her in amusement. 

“You sound exactly like Reg–” She stops short, and Hope looks hard at her. “Never mind,” she says, and a wave of sorrow washes over her, dragging her into the depths of the abyss again. 

And  _ this _ – more than anything else, this grief over a relationship that’s been over for twelve years–  _ this _ is why she needs to move on, or spend the rest of her life trying.

* * *

When Regina realizes what’s going on, she’s furious. Fireball, curse-ready, desperately furious. And then furious with herself for not piecing it together faster. 

Because the tells are all there. Henry is  _ different _ , and she can see it in her every move. The way that she walks, that odd little slouch that is so uncharacteristic. The way she laughs with Zelena and Mulan like she isn’t trying so hard, like she’s less eager to please and perfectly content when she makes mistakes. The way she watches Regina, with shining eyes that can’t disguise a hunger that lurks beneath them.

She’s taken to hiding food– excusing herself from the table and slipping half her plate into the garbage– and Regina had only noticed it in the trash after Henry had been long asleep for the night. Instead, Henry is casually cooking instant mac and cheese boxes that have been in the back of the pantry for  _ years _ , since Robin had stayed with them in middle school, and she savors it like it’s good. 

But it’s the socks that tip Regina off. Henry has started sleeping with socks on, padding across the floor with them in the night, and Regina has  _ never  _ tolerated socks on at night. Emma used to sleep with them all the time, and Regina used to kick her feet away at night, disgusted, until Emma had wheedled her way back into Regina’s arms. She stares at Henry’s feet accusingly, and Henry says, “What? The bathroom floor is cold at night,” and wanders off to bed. 

The second morning, Regina finds the sugariest cereal that she has in her pantry–  _ Cinnamon Toast Crunch _ , which is absolutely not one of her vices and must have been left by a preteen Robin, too, obviously, and she places it on the table. Henry says, “Ooh,  _ nice _ ,” and sticks her hand into the box, scooping up a handful and eating it happily. 

Regina watches from the doorway, her eyes narrowed and her stomach churning. 

This has happened before. Not to Henry, though not for lack of trying, and not in a situation where she’d realized it. She’s even been on the other end of a version of it, and she knows how frustrating it can be, how terrifying.

Henry has been possessed. Somewhere along the way during her program, a malicious spirit has taken control of her body or kidnapped her, and now someone is impersonating Regina’s daughter. 

She can feel the rage like a slow-building fire, consuming everything in its path. Henry is her trigger point, the only person who can still set her off, and Archie cautions her about it sometimes.  _ Be careful, _ he says.  _ Think about Henry’s eyes.  _ Henry hates when Regina goes too far, when she can’t contain her wrath, and Regina will do anything in her power to protect Henry from herself. Anything, unless it means that Henry is unprotected.

Not-Henry looks up, and she smiles sheepishly. “Sorry, Mom,” she says, licking off her fingers– Henry! Licking off her fingers! Regina should have known the instant that she’d seen her in the Boston terminal. “I’ll use a spoon next time. Promise.” She grins, and there’s another sign that this is a fraud. Henry sees the earliest hints of the fury in her gaze and recognizes them, and tries to disperse it. This Henry doesn’t seem to notice at all.

She heads to work and has a guard tail Henry while she’s out, watching from a distance and reporting back to Regina. But this fraud is crafty. “She walked up and down Main Street and ate lunch at Granny’s. She followed the tourist routes,” the guard informs her. “Then she went to the portal terminal and met your sister there, and they went to the park together and practiced magic for some time.” 

“I want a list of every store she stopped in and what she purchased,” Regina instructs the guard. “Every moment she hesitated. Every person she spoke to. I am going to get answers.” 

But the answers don’t come. There is no credible explanation for what Not-Henry is up to and what she’s done, and Regina is thrumming with despair after another day of this, of smiling at an imposter and living in terror for her daughter.  _ Where  _ is Henry? Is this her body, or is she missing, too? What if there’s been a body swap and she’s off somewhere else, alone and afraid? What if she’s in trouble and Regina can’t get to her in time? 

And when she can’t bear not knowing anymore, she takes action.

* * *

This is a  _ disaster _ , and Henry is on her own. Day One ends on the couch, creaming Ma in video games as Ma looks on in despair–  _ What did you  _ do  _ on that trip that gave you the upper hand?  _ And it’s okay. Day Two is a day without Hook at all, and they go grocery shopping together and cook an underspiced dinner that’s still pretty decent. Day Three is more contentious. 

“You’re going out with him?” she demands in the morning. Her voice is doing that shrill thing that she hates, but she can’t stop it. “Still?” 

“I’m going to work, kid,” Ma says, looking very unhappy. “Hook said that he’d come by and bring lunch. It’s not really a date.” 

“That’s even worse,” Henry says desolately. “At least keep it  _ formal _ .” She doesn’t understand how Hope could shrug off this whole thing and act as though it’ll all be fine. Ma had almost married Hook once before, and she doesn’t even seem to  _ like _ him all that much. Why would she do this when Mom is out there? Doesn’t she  _ want  _ to–

She watches Ma when she unlocks her phone that morning and memorizes the passcode for future reference. Once Ma is out, Henry springs into action. She ignores the buzzing from her mirror that means Hope is trying to reach her– she’s  _ annoyed  _ with Hope, let her wait– and begins to scour the apartment for signs of Mom.

There’s the photo that Hope had brought to the program in Ma’s nightstand, which sends a happy shiver and a wave of homesickness through Henry. A few recipes in a recipe box in a cabinet in cramped, familiar writing, complete with notations–  _ if it says thirty minutes then that means thirty, Emma, not ten _ and another that makes Henry swallow. _ Save this one for our future children _ on a card for a lasagna recipe that Henry knows like the back of her hand. Mom’s recipes are buried deep in the box, and the rest are from Snow, who prefaces and signs each recipe like she’s writing a letter. The box is coated in a thick layer of dust and must not have been touched in years.

Henry finds a bathrobe folded at the bottom of the linen closet that is identical to the one that Mom uses, and there is a ragged old red jacket at the back of Ma’s closet that has an enchanted mirror in the pocket. Mom is everywhere, if you know where to look, and Henry finds the jackpot at the bottom of Ma’s sock drawer. 

It’s a short letter, handwritten in Mom’s script, and with it is a tiny version of the photograph of Henry as a baby that has been hanging in the foyer for Henry’s whole life. 

Henry unfolds it carefully, staring down at the words. 

_ I don’t want us to hate each other _ , it begins.  _ I spent a few months hating you, and I could hardly live with myself. This just wasn’t our time, and it was going to shatter us whether we liked it or not. But I can’t bear to imagine you hating me for the rest of your life.  _

_ I think I will always miss you. _

_ Thank you for the photograph. I thought that Snow had been interfering when she’d sent it, but she swears that it wasn’t her. So I can only guess that it had been you. It is very you to make a gesture like that without a single word of commentary, I suppose. I’ve sent you one of my own. _

_ She’s beautiful. They both are. _

It is signed in Mom’s flowing script, and Henry holds the photo with trembling fingers and swallows back a sob. Ma has had a picture of her for all this time. And a letter from Mom, simple and heartfelt. That must mean something. There must still be a chance.

But it isn’t until late that night that she’s certain. Ma comes home from work with a milkshake in her hand and a sheepish smile. “Peace offering?” she says, and she sits with Henry on the couch and slips an arm around her shoulders. They eat on the couch in Ma’s apartment, which would appal Mom but is actually kind of nice. A show plays in the background as Henry chews on sweet but tasteless dinner, and Ma says, “So.” 

“How was your not-date?” Henry asks dully, because she knows that she’s supposed to ask. 

Ma grimaces. “It was lunch, not a funeral. He dropped off some food and tagged along when I slayed a hydra that had popped through the downtown portal. He even helped a little bit.” Henry scowls, and Ma’s eyes twinkle. “Oh, you’ll like this. The hydra tried to swallow him whole–” 

“I do like that,” Henry says, perking up. 

“And he used his hook to slice into its throat. Gross and bloody, your favorite kind of story.” Ma slides a hand through Henry’s hair, mussing it. “Speaking of, I should probably go shower.” 

Henry slides away from her. “Ew,” she says, affronted, and Ma laughs and swoops down to press a kiss to her temple, playful and then soft and a little sad.

“I have off this weekend,” she says suddenly, and she smiles uncertainly. “I thought…I know we’ve never done it before, but I thought you might want to go visit Gran and Gramps in the Enchanted Forest for a few days. It’s not a tour of all the realms or anything so fancy, but we can do some hiking in a magical woods and live in a castle, just like you’ve always wanted.” She laughs, rueful at a joke that Henry isn’t in on. “I thought you might not come back from the program at all.” 

Henry feels an uncomfortable guilt, a compassion for Ma that she hadn’t expected. “That sounds really nice,” she says. It sounds boring, to be honest, but she’ll be with Ma with no interruptions or pirates to intrude, which is far more ideal. Ma looks perturbed at her lack of excitement, and Henry musters up a wide beam that satisfies Ma.

“Great. It’ll be fun,” Ma promises. “I think Grandma is already planning a ball in your honor. We’ll have to teach you to dance.” She flashes Henry a smile, and Henry curtsies in response, a perfect movement that has Ma laughing aloud as she bows and ducks into the bathroom in one fluid motion.

As soon as she’s gone, Henry grabs her phone and unlocks it. She checks the text messages first, but there are none– absolutely none with Mom– and the messages only go back six years. Mom’s number isn’t saved on her phone, though Henry does find Ruby’s and Aunt Zelena’s. There are no pictures of Mom, either, which is disappointing.

She  _ knows  _ that Mom still loves Ma. But is Ma pining like Mom does? Or is this a lost cause? It doesn’t seem like there’s any real evidence of Mom’s presence in Ma’s life except for one photograph and a letter stuffed to the bottom of a drawer.

She’s close to despair when she opens the phone browser and clicks on the history. This should be an exercise in futility–

–Except that it isn’t. Just over a week ago, Ma had searched for  _ Regina Mills _ . And she’d clicked on a few pictures that Henry clicks on, too, awash with relief. Ma is thinking about Mom. Ma has searched for–

The last picture that Ma had clicked on is of Henry and Mom, and Henry sighs in relief. She goes back to the history, scrolls back a few more weeks, and finds Mom’s name again and that same picture. And again, a little while before that. Ma doesn’t use her browser much, but she has used it to find Mom, over and over again.

_ Which means _ there’s still hope. Ma still loves Mom, Henry knows it. And Hook is just a distraction.

_ And _ , she’s been looking at pictures of Henry. Which means– Ma actually wants to see  _ her _ –

She’s invigorated enough by this discovery that she actually takes out the mirror when it buzzes again, flipping it open. “ _ Hello _ , Hope–”

Mom’s face stares back at her. “–you’re having a good day,” Henry finishes quickly, angling herself so she’s standing against the white wall of the hallway. She glances down, remembers that Hope doesn’t wear a watch, and peers down the hall to the kitchen clock. It’s late, and she really hopes that Mom isn’t calling her from inside the house. “How come you’re using your mirror?” she asks. Mom usually only uses it when Henry is out of realm. She has a phone for other calls.

Mom gives her a terse smile. “I just wanted to see you,” she says. “Where are you?” 

“Um,” Henry bites her lip, shaking off the sudden sensation that she’s entering a minefield. “I’m…in my room,” she guesses. “Just working on my summer homework.” She’d finished that before she’d gone off on the program, thankfully, and she had tracked down Hope’s yesterday and gotten to work on it, too.

Mom studies her, and Henry is left with the uneasy feeling that she is being studied. “You changed your shirt,” she says.

Henry shrugs, thinking fast. “It’s warm in here,” she says. “I’ll probably put my other shirt back on later.” She hurries to change the topic to something safer. “When are you coming home?” 

Mom just watches her, and Henry is left with the sinking feeling that she’s said something wrong. But then Mom says, “I’m just working a little late. I’ll be back soon, I promise.” She smiles, her eyes soft, and she says, “I love you, Henry. Don’t ever forget that.” 

The mirror goes blank, and Henry shivers and hurries to Hope’s bedroom. “Hope Swan,” she hisses into the mirror, and Hope appears almost instantly. “Mom just called me.” 

“Oh, now you’re willing to talk to me,” Hope says crossly. “Are we done with the silent treatment?” 

Henry waves her hand impatiently. “Listen. I told her that it’s hot so I changed and I’m in my room doing my summer homework. She said that she’s working a little late. I think she suspects something.” 

“No way.” Hope shakes her head, dismissive. “Mom has been  _ great _ . You were right, she’s always home for dinner, and we hang out all night. She even invited me to come to work with her tomorrow, which I am absolutely going to do, so I need a rundown of everything that I can actually be interested in–” 

“I know Mom,” Henry says, unconvinced. “Something is going on. You need to talk to her. Tell her the truth.” 

Hope scoffs. “The only thing we need to talk about is why she finished the Cinnamon Toast Crunch box this morning when she’s the one who offered it to me.” She laughs. “Relax, Henrietta,” she drawls. “It’s all under control. Zelena’s got an idea for Ma, too. I think it might be a little dangerous, but in a chill way.” She blows Henry a kiss and shuts her mirror, and Henry is left staring at the mirror in dawning realization as she registers Hope’s last few words.

Mom had  _ offered  _ Hope cereal. Henry hates every kind of cereal, especially the ones that are laden with sugar and just not very good, and Mom had taken one out of the pantry and offered it to Hope. 

  
Mom  _ knows _ .


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for being such fabulous readers!!! ily keep being you <3 
> 
> i THINK we're looking at something like 12-13 chapters? unclear. hopefully by thursday's update i'll be able to add a concrete number. also i have upped the rating, not for this chapter but so you're aware that eventually there's gonna be some smut!! just keeping you informed xoxo

There is no cereal this morning, just an oatmeal concoction and Mom watching Hope with a slight smile on her face. “This isn’t bad,” Hope says, surprised, and then hastily amends, “Not that I don’t always love it. And all your food. It was  _ so  _ hard being on that trip and eating all that…bland, tasteless food.” 

Mom laughs. “It seems to have grown on you,” she points out, and Hope is relieved by the suggestion. Sometimes, Mom makes it so easy to pretend, to pass as Henry. Mom doesn’t ask too many questions or probe too hard, just accepts the subtle changes when Hope slips up. “I hope that was the worst part of the program.” She takes a bite of her own oatmeal. “I was worried that two weeks on your own might end badly. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable–” 

“It’s just that I occasionally get jumped by assassins and kidnappers?” Hope still isn’t quite sure what she’s going to do if she’s faced with one of those assassins, but she is struck by the mental image of waking up in a headlock, an assailant’s arm wrapped around her neck.

She’d just bite him until she was free, she decides. 

But Mom is shaking her head. “If I know nothing else, I know that you can handle yourself against those buffoons,” she says, and there’s a hard glint in her eyes that Hope hasn’t seen before. She remembers Henry’s warnings about what happens when Mom gets near someone who might try to hurt her and shivers. 

But the glint disappears almost immediately, and Mom corrects her, “It’s just that you have trouble making friends your age.” She sighs. “I was so worried when you told me about the friction with…Gretel, right? Your roommate.” 

“Oh. Yeah, we worked it through,” Hope says quickly. “She was pretty great in the end. Tough.  _ Very  _ cool and smart. Kind of the ideal human being, really.” She may be going a little overboard. “Also, totally became besties with these two other girls, Jacinda and Tiana. We literally wandered around  _ everywhere  _ together, like a little herd of perfect princesses. They had nothing on Gretel, though.” 

Mom looks amused. “Nothing like some mutual hatred that grows into affection,” she says. “Most of my closest relationships started with one of us trying to kill the other. Except Emma,” she says primly, and she smiles to herself, a quick and glancing smirk. “I only wanted to curse her to sleep forever.” 

“Ha,” Hope says, delighted by this reveal. “Like mother, like daughter?” 

“Oh, she’s  _ nothing  _ like Snow,” Mom says hastily, looking alarmed at the suggestion. “I put Snow to sleep because I wanted to punish her. I put Emma to sleep because I needed her to stop interfering in…well, everything. I was trying to keep my curse going, and she wouldn’t  _ stop _ .” She shakes her head. “I was very smug about the whole thing until she started flatlining. Then I only wanted to wake her up.” 

“Mom,” Hope says, spellbound, and her heart thumps and thumps as she pieces together the impossible. “You had  _ true love’s kiss  _ with her? WIth Emma?” 

Mom sighs, the melancholy returning as she sets her spoon down. “It was a very different time, sweetheart. We were very different.” 

“How do you just…share true love’s kiss and then never speak again?” Hope blurts it out and feels more like Henry than herself. But  _ how _ , how could Mom and Ma just give up on a relationship like that when they know it’s the real deal? 

“It was a long time ago.” Mom massages her temple. “A lot happened in between then and now. And sometimes two people can love each other very much and still grow to resent each other. Absence might make the heart grow fonder, but it doesn’t erase how badly our actual relationship had gone.” 

Hope watches her, and she feels a spark of worry. Mom sounds so  _ final _ about it, so positive that there’s no hope. “Don’t you ever wonder if you could save it? Like go track down M– Emma and try again?” 

Mom watches her, brow slightly creased, and she says finally, “No.”

“No?” Hope repeats. “Just…no?”

“No,” Mom says, and her voice is abrupt, guarded. “I’m sure that she’s moved on, and I know that I have much more in my life now. It was…a difficult time, when Emma and I were together. There were a lot of good times, but we spent most of our time fighting wars and in sacrifice. I don’t want to try again. I want to find peace.” 

Hope stares at her, uncertain if she’s lying or not. Her voice is forceful, and Hope suddenly misses Henry, in all her fretting glory. Henry would know if Mom were all bluster. And Mom gives nothing away now. 

She doesn’t speak, and Mom says, “Why don’t you get your things together? I promised you a day at Town Hall, and I know it’s been a while since you’ve been there. A lot has changed.” 

“ _ Awesome _ ,” Hope says, and she makes a beeline for the stairs, pulling together a few necessities. Henry’s phone, because she’s going to want to take pictures. The mirror, just in case. A few basics that she always carries with her. Mom takes care of packing lunch, and they’re on their way in only a few minutes. 

Hope loves Storybrooke, the quiet feel of it and the smiles on the streets. There are strange people walking through– some human, some other things entirely– and there’s nothing quite like seeing a rock troll and a giant cat sitting side by side on a park bench, chatting. “Do you think she’s a real cat?” she wants to know. “Like if a rat went by, would she try to eat it?” 

Mom looks at her with muted amusement. “I don’t know. Do you have a rat to spare?” She laughs, light and airy, and Hope is delighted to hear it. 

She ventures to say, “The whole aesthetic here is  _ amazing _ . I’ve always wanted to– I mean, I guess I never really talk about it,” she says hastily, remembering herself. “But I’ve always been so happy to live in a place like this. An in-between place, where we can fight off threats and see magic in action and still have TV. Growing up here must be– is– so great–” She stumbles over her words.

When she looks up, Mom is watching her with an expression she can’t read, like confusion and something dark beneath the surface. Hope doesn’t understand it, wishes for Henry again, and tries a winsome grin. “Yes,” Mom says quietly. “I’ve always been very happy that this is the place where you grew up. It opens you up to so many threats, but it has seemed manageable until now.” 

“Oh, definitely.”  _ This  _ Hope can speak about. “I can take on any assassin with my magic. Remember that snake guy from my trip? Goo. And not just because Gretel jumped him– though I think she was probably the decisive factor there– but because I’m super capable.” 

“I don’t doubt it,” Mom says, and she looks very sad. “Come on in. Let me take you through the new additions to Town Hall.” 

On the outside, Town Hall looks just like any other little building in Storybrooke, if equipped with a larger door and some fancy columns. But the resemblance ends there. “Whoa,” Hope whispers. The building must have some magic on it to make it look so small, because it looks like a  _ castle  _ inside. There is a grand reception area in front of them, marble-floored and with a winding staircase on either side of the reception desk. Knights and security guards lounge around the room, hovering near the stairs and what looks like an open ballroom on the far end of the right staircase. 

Mom leads Hope to the doorway at the far end of the left staircase, and Hope says, remembering Henry’s descriptions, “Your office is upstairs. This is the indoor garden.” 

“I wanted to take you straight to the lower levels,” Mom says, smiling at her as she leads her on. Her hand is tight around Hope’s, and Hope feels a thrill of anticipation. “There have been a number of changes around here.” 

Hope struggles to remember the floor plan to Town Hall. There had been so many, and Henry had been much better at mastering them than Hope had been. “That sounds like fun,” she says, walking with Mom through the indoor gardens. They’ve been enchanted to feel as though they’re outside, and there is a quiet breeze and a scattering of bees and butterflies who enter and leave through openings in the walls. Toward the back of the garden is a nondescript door beneath a mass of vines, and Mom touches her hand to a pad on its right and the door slides open. 

Hope finally pieces it together. “It’s nice that it’s been redone,” she says, following Mom down a stone staircase. “I thought this just led to some kind of dungeon–” 

There is a blast of purple energy around her as she reaches the bottom step, and Hope is thrown backward against a hard wall, dimly lit. It takes her a moment to realize that this is  _ magic _ , and she is under attack.

It takes her another moment– a wild, Henry-has-another-kidnapper moment– to realize that it’s Mom who’d thrown her. 

A cell door closes behind them, bars falling into place. Mom stalks forward, her eyes burning with loathing where they’d been oblique before. A flame hovers above her hand, and she looks as though she’s about to hurl it at Hope. “What have you done with my daughter, imposter?” she demands, and there is murder in her gaze.

* * *

The portal stations are different when you’re just an ordinary person and not the daughter of the Mayor of Storybrooke. For one, the lines are _way_ longer. Henry makes a face at the line and Ma laughs. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “I think they move pretty quickly. The Enchanted Forest is always a popular location.” 

“Couples like to go there for romantic proposals,” Henry agrees. “It’s a third of the income for most of the smaller kingdoms, which is why they’re really antsy about all the proposed security measures to vet visitors. But there are a lot of malicious people moving through the area, too, some with weapons that aren’t used in the Enchanted Forest.” She makes a face. “You’d think they’d be grateful to Storybrooke for setting up those regulations.” 

Ma glances at her, eyebrows raised. “I didn’t know you’d been studying the politics of the Enchanted Forest. I thought you just wanted to wrestle ogres.” 

That’s a fair assessment of Hope. “I have layers,” Henry offers, pleased at Ma’s surprise. It’s nice to impress Ma with herself instead of just being Hope. She glances at the unmoving line, which seems to be getting longer and longer behind them. “I think that if they’re going to create these new security measures that are going to hurt tourism and protect royal riches, then they should take it out of the coffers of each kingdom instead of taxing the peasants more. They have little to gain from the security.” 

“Absolutely,” Ma agrees. “But these royals just care about themselves.” She shrugs one shoulder. “They barely think of the peasants as people. My mother once told me that– there was a queen in her kingdom who had had her guards wipe out whole towns during a civil war,” she says finally. “And Snow would talk about it all the time. But she would also talk about killing everyone loyal to…to that person…” Her voice trails off, and she curls her fingers into her palm and then uncurls them. “I don’t think they are raised to value individual lives like we do. And while they do have regrets about those deaths now, it’s not the same.” 

“Who was that queen?” Henry asks, but she has a sinking feeling that she knows exactly who it might be. She doesn’t like to think about the Bad Times, before the curse, when Mom was feared across the land. It’s like there’s a different version of Mom who was a villain and Henry’s Mom is the hero.

Ma looks at Henry, chewing on her lip for a moment as though she’s finding the right lie, and Henry is startled when she says, “Regina. Her name is Queen Regina.” Ma looks just as started with herself and the admission, and she adds quickly, “You know who she is. Regina Mills? Mayor of Storybrooke, Queen of the Realms? She and Grandma used to have a long feud going– what’s going on over there?” she says, distracted. 

There’s a commotion near the front of the line, which has still not been moving, and then a few raised voices. One of them is alarmingly familiar, and Henry groans aloud. “Why is  _ he  _ here?” 

Hook is striding toward them, a smirk on his face, and Henry looks at Ma accusingly. She’s already shaking her head. “Killian,  _ no _ . I thought we talked about this.” 

“Yes, yes, you’d like to spend quality time with your parents, who you insist hate me despite your father and me building a long lasting relationship in our years as comrades,” Hook says, clutching his chest in offense. “I only came for a goodbye kiss.” He raises his eyebrows at Ma, who only looks irritated.  _ Good _ . “But I’ve just heard from the portal authorities here that there is a problem with the Chicago portal stations and trips may be backed up for a day or two.” 

Ma sighs. “A day or two?” she repeats, glaring out at the portal. There are a few people right up at the portal who are turning around, packing up their luggage like they’ve been told to go. “Fine,” she says tiredly. “There’s a station in Detroit. That’s just four hours–” 

“ _ Or _ ,” Hook says grandly, “You could take my ship and a magic bean.” He tosses a bean into the air and then catches it, winking at Henry. Henry stares back coldly. “Ten minutes to the harbor, three to go through the portal. Your choice.”

No question about it. Hope would tell Ma to drive to Detroit, would do her best to ditch the pirate. She wouldn’t put up with him attaching himself to this trip and would keep Ma all to herself. But Henry isn’t Hope, and Ma looks so exhausted when she’d been enthusiastic until then. Ma is taking Henry to a place that Hope claims she  _ hates  _ and Henry doesn’t want to make it any more unpleasant for her than it already is.

Mom would say that Henry  _ has a good heart _ . Hope would say that Henry is  _ a hopeless idiot _ , which would earn her a dollar in the Hope Pun Penalty Jar (which, by the way,  _ thanks, Hope, for not mentioning _ , because Henry is something like five dollars down in the past few days). Henry’s mirror buzzes in her pocket as though Hope knows exactly what she’s up to, and Henry ignores it.

She says, “We can just go with him if it’s faster,” and she bites her lip at the way that Ma sags with quiet relief.

“Are you sure?” she says. “This was supposed to be just us, and he’ll stick around if he’s our ride back–” 

Henry nods, feeling a little sick about it. “I’m sure,” she says, and she squeezes Ma’s hand. “I’m just excited to be going there with you.” She means it. The Enchanted Forest is a bore, but she finds herself actually looking forward to this trip. Everything is a little better when Ma is there. 

Ma nods sharply. “Got it. Let me just…confirm Hook’s story, he isn’t always reliable when it comes to me–” She says it wryly, and Henry wonders if Hook will be able to do Henry’s job for her and manage to push Ma away all by himself. That’d be nice.

Ma wanders toward the portals, and Henry stares up at Hook in hostility. He eyes her, and she says, “You’d better not say anything about us starting out on the wrong foot.” She is in  _ no mood _ for platitudes.

“I was just thinking about boarding schools,” Hook says thoughtfully, his eyes cold. With Ma gone, the harmless-idiot thing fades from his face, and Henry sees someone ruthless behind it. A  _ pirate  _ instead of a bumbling, lovesick fool. “Somewhere far away where they send nosy little brats. There’s always Neverland.” 

And Henry is suddenly afraid of the man staring at her, his stance casual but his words laced with poison. “You’ve lost your mind if you think that I’m going anywhere,” she says, her fists clenching. “Ma isn’t in love with you–”

“She went to hell for me,” Hook says, and his laugh is unpleasant. “She can say all she wants that she was in love with Regina and that was out of guilt, but the fact remains that I know her better than she knows herself. She ran because she was afraid of marriage, and she jumped into a doomed relationship because of cold feet. She was in love with me, and she would have given up everything for me. Not the queen,  _ me _ . And she’ll do it again.” 

“You’re an idiot,” Henry bites out, and she searches her mind for a hex– any hex, something she can whisper that will make Hook suffer. “I’m her daughter.” 

Hook scoffs. “Not by blood,” he says, and he smiles darkly at her. “Do you know how many families she’s had?” 

Henry whispers the words to a hex just as Ma returns and Hook guffaws. “Your little lady has been telling me the most amusing stories,” he says, and he scratches his arm. “She’s a little firebrand.” He scratches his leg. Then his arm again. A little harder, his face screwed up in a grimace.

Ma says, “Kiddo, did you…?” She closes her eyes and sighs, and then she reaches out to touch Hook’s arm. Henry grimaces, regretting everything, and Hook stops scratching his arm to throw Henry a triumphant look as white magic surrounds him. 

The hex is lifted. Ma says, “ _ Really? _ ” and sighs again, and Henry feels like the worst person in the universe. She hurries to walk beside Ma as Ma slings her bag over her shoulder and leads the way to the exit, but Hook elbows Henry out of the way.

“Let me take that for you,” he says, the perfect gentleman again. “Such lovely ladies deserve to be properly escorted.” Ma rolls her eyes but lets Hook take the bag. He walks beside Ma, chatting about the trip, and Henry trails behind them as they make their way to the docks.

* * *

Snow–  _ Grandma _ , Henry corrects herself, but it’s hard to think of her as anything other than Snow. Mom has her over sometimes, and it’s always  _ weird _ . Snow has always trailed after her, asking her questions about her school and her friends like she’d cared, and Henry is just now beginning to understand why. 

Snow knows  _ both of them. _ Henry and Mom, Hope and Ma. Maybe she thinks of Henry as her granddaughter, too. She greets Henry with the same beam today as she always does, no difference in the way that she treats Hope over Henry, and Henry is ensconced in a warm embrace. “I’m _ so  _ happy you’re here,” she says, and then she’s wrapped around Ma instead. “You’ve been hiding away for years.” 

“I’m not hiding,” Ma says, affronted. “I just prefer to spend my time in places with indoor plumbing.” 

Snow scoffs. “We got that installed  _ years  _ ago. Come on!” She waves them on, to a carriage where David is waiting for them at the reins. “Let’s get going. I want to show you the castle.” Her eyes are bright as she takes in Henry, and Henry smiles uncertainly. 

The Enchanted Forest has never interested her all that much. There are a bunch of semi-benevolent rulers who might be considered despots in another land, and the peasants are all a little too happy under the monarchy for Henry to be comfortable there. There’s very little nuance and the intrigue is all simplistic, and the only appeal is the stunning vistas and the fact that it’s where Mom grew up. 

Today, she musters up the energy to look enthusiastic as Ma glances at her. “I can’t wait,” she says unconvincingly, and Snow looks alarmed. “Are we really going to have a ball–?” she begins, because  _ that _ , at least, is something to be excited about.

She stops because of the sharp look that blooms on Snow’s face, so unlike her round and kind smiles. “Emma,” Snow says, and her voice is dangerous. “What is  _ that _ ?” 

Ma twists around, and Henry follows her gaze. Hook has finally emerged from his ship, and he is sauntering toward them. Ma looks guilty. “It’s not a big deal,” she says. “It’s just a…a thing I’m trying out.”

“ _ Why _ ?” Snow demands, and Henry has never liked her more. “What would possess you to… _ again _ –?” She’s sputtering in disbelief, and Ma looks away, her arms sliding around each other defensively. “Emma!”

She pulls Ma with her, dragging her to a patch of forest away from Henry, and Henry glances at David, who is staring at Hook with unease, and slips after them. 

She can hear their raised voices from a distance. “–know you favored her over me then,” Ma is saying, her voice low and hurt. “But it’s been  _ twelve years _ . Can’t I move on?” 

“I didn’t  _ favor  _ her– you’re my  _ daughter _ ,” Snow says, and she sounds even more hurt than Ma. “And he was the worst relationship you’ve ever had.” 

“Not even close,” Ma says, and she lets out a sigh that sounds more like a sob. “He just showed up at my door, Mom,” she says. “When I was feeling like shit and all alone. And it’s been nice to have someone, okay? I’m so tired of living with ghosts. And I know that everyone looks at…at her and at me and assumes that that whole mess was my fault–” 

Snow sounds chagrined. “I don’t. I really don’t.  _ She  _ doesn’t think that–” 

“Yeah, well, she’s always been too hard on herself,” Ma says darkly.

Snow pauses. “I’m not sure what exactly you want me to say,” she says with delicacy. “Do you want me to say he’s a good idea? I won’t lie to you.” 

“Give him a chance,” Ma says. “That’s all. It’s what I’m doing.” Her voice is pleading. “The way it felt to fight a monster and have someone backing me up was…” She takes a shuddering breath. “I missed it. Is that really so bad?” 

“You miss her,” Snow mutters. “Not just  _ someone _ .” But she is quiet again, and then she says, “I guess he did bring you here. I can’t fault him that.” 

_ No _ , Henry thinks despondently, another potential ally fading away.

But when she peers into the dark woods, she sees Ma and Snow hugging tightly, and she is relieved. Ma moves with brittle bones as they climb into the carriage, and Henry squeezes into the seat beside Ma before Hook can. Snow glares fiercely at Hook, and he says, “Well, I’d best help with the horses like a good husband-to-be,” and winks at Ma before he goes to join David.

Henry says, “I hope they trample him.” 

Ma says, “ _ Hope _ !” But Snow grins at her, and Henry feels like she’s finally found an ally here.

“Your Uncle Neal is presiding over the court right now,” Snow tells her as they ride toward the castle. “He’s starting to learn the ropes because it’s likely that he’ll be the one to inherit the crown. Unless Emma would like to–” She peers hopefully at Ma, who makes a face. “ _ Anyway _ . He wanted to take you riding tomorrow morning, if you’re up for it.” 

“I love riding,” Henry says without thinking, and then amends at the bewildered stares, “Theoretically. I did it a lot on the program?” 

“Excellent,” Snow says briskly. The carriage stops, and she opens the door for them. “I thought we’d eat something now and then work on your ballroom dancing.” 

Ma sits at one end of the dining room table and Hook slides in beside her before Henry can claim the spot. She sits opposite him instead, smiling prettily and kicking him in the shins. He keeps a fixed smile on his face and says, “Ah, you’d expect a table this large to have legroom for everyone.” 

Ma hisses, “ _ Hope _ ,” and Henry practices mild hexes instead. A few quick words, and Hook’s fork turns fire-hot. He yelps and drops it, to everyone’s bewilderment and Ma’s embarrassment. Another hex, and his spaghetti turns to worms. He spits them out and they wriggle on his plate, and Henry does her best to look innocent. 

“Isn’t there an FDA here?” she says, and now even Snow looks apologetic.

“I don’t know what happened there, Hook,” she says. “My spaghetti is fine.” But she eyes it dubiously. “Maybe we should just go to the ballroom.” 

“All that monster hunting in the Land Without Magic must have made you rusty,” Hook says, and he takes Ma’s hand and leads her from the room with only a cold smile for Henry as he departs.

Henry strides after them, scowling, and Snow says gently, “Your mother could use some support right now.” 

Rich words from Snow, who’d been just as horrified at Hook, and Henry shrugs. “She could use some  _ sense _ ,” she mumbles. “I don’t want to…to go in there with them.” She grits her teeth. “I don’t need to, anyway.” 

“You should learn some basic ballroom dancing before the ball,” Snow says.

Defiantly, Henry puts her hands on David’s shoulders. He’s much too tall for her, but she’s danced with him before at events, and she knows how to balance height. “Try me,” she says. “I bet I’m a natural.” 

She whirls around with him as he takes a few steps, spinning easily and following the steps of a far more complex dance than intended. In and out, in and out, and she is dancing by herself by the end, stubborn and determined.

When she looks up, Snow and David are gaping at her, and Henry doesn’t care anymore, doesn’t care that Snow can’t keep a secret and that she’s supposed to be on her own. She’s  _ tired  _ of being on her own, and she’s so tired of hiding who she is. And most of all, she’s tired of  _ Hook _ , ruining all of her plans. She does a perfect curtsy, staring at Snow and David as they stare at her. “Hope?” David says in disbelief, and Henry shakes her head.

It’s Snow who says it, her eyes round as she grasps what’s going on. “Henry?” she asks tentatively, and Henry nods slowly. 

There are arms around her in an instant, Snow holding her tighter than she’d thought possible. “Oh,  _ honey _ ,” she says tearfully, and Henry clutches onto her, more relieved than she’d imagined she would be for someone to know the truth. Hope has Aunt Zelena, but Henry’s been playing a role for days now, alone and in despair, and finally–  _ finally! _ someone gets it. “My sweet little Henry–” 

“Everything okay in here?” It’s Ma, Hook lurking behind her.

Snow bobs her head with extra enthusiasm. “Perfect! It’s perfect! I’ve just been…talking to Hope, my granddaughter–” 

“The granddaughter we’ve always had,” David puts in, and he is looking at Henry with dangerously wet eyes, too. “Who’s always been a part of our family, of course–”

“Just spending time with her Gran and Gramps,” Snow sniffles. “Isn’t she beautiful?” 

Henry stares at them, alarmed. Ma says, “Uh,” looking at them as though they’ve all lost their minds. “I’m just going to…head out for a run,” she says finally. “Want to come along, kid?” 

“Hope doesn’t run,” Snow says swiftly. “She can stay with us–”

Ma looks baffled. “She’s been running with me since she was seven,” she says. 

“Right,” Snow says, her brow creasing. “But  _ before  _ that, did she run? No.” She claps her hands together like she’s made a salient point.

Henry says, “I’d really like that run.” Already, she has regrets. 

* * *

The dungeon is dark and cold and empty. Hope can’t see anything but the barest gleam of movement, but Mom’s face lit by orange flames.  _ What have you done with my daughter, imposter?  _ and her eyes are terrifying. For the first time, Hope understands why Henry is so wary of letting their mother encounter her assassins.

Mom strides closer, her expression cold, and Hope scrambles back. “No,” she says shakily. “I’m not an imposter. I’m–” 

“I don’t give a  _ fuck  _ who you are,” Mom spits out. “Where. The hell. Is my daughter?” 

For the first time, it occurs to Hope that Mom might see this as something far more malicious than it is. That Mom might not think of Hope as her daughter at all, and that this is just another kidnapping attempt to her. She struggles for the right thing to say to calm the furious woman approaching her, but she has nothing. 

Mom raises one hand and hurls her against the wall. The impact is softer than Hope expects, which is a relief until Mom grinds out, “I don’t know if she’s still in that body or if you’re a shapeshifter, but if I find out that I can torture you without hurting my daughter, then you will scream every truth to me before the day is done.” 

Hope shakes. Mom bears closer, relentless. “My daughter,” she snarls. “ _ Now _ .” 

Hope swallows, her grand plans forgotten. “Chicago,” she says hoarsely. “She’s in Chicago, I  _ swear _ , you can go and see–”

And Mom disappears with a puff of purple magic and leaves Hope sliding to the floor, her forehead wet with sweat and her heart pounding.  _ Please. Please _ let her find Henry– let this whole thing be over– let Hope never make the mistake again of thinking she could con the Queen of the Realms again. 

Mom has been so  _ distant  _ all day, has spoken familiarly but never quite given herself over to Hope. Hope had thought that it had just been who Mom is, but Henry had been right. Mom had known, had known all along, and she’d been quietly leading Hope into this trap. 

She reaches into her pocket and finds the mirror, and she whispers shakily, “Henry Mills.” No response. She tries the phone, but there’s no service. She’s stuck down here, and who knows what Mom might do if she doesn’t find Henry?

She has to get out of here.

She feels around the cell until she reaches the bars. There’s a lock on them, but Hope isn’t Emma Swan’s daughter for nothing. She keeps a hairpin in her pocket at all times– even Henry’s pocket– and she maneuvers it to unlock the cell. 

She doesn’t have much time. In the faint light, she can make out a hallway of cells, and there is something metal at one end that might be the exit. Carefully, she steals toward it, but there is no lock to pick in it, only a blank door. Another hand sensor, probably.

She starts toward the other end of the hallway, fear gripping her, and there’s a burst of light behind her– purple light, and then Mom’s voice. “Where’d you go, little rat?” She says it in a singsong, but there is no humor in her tone. “It was a nice attempt, but I have done a search. Henry is nowhere in this realm.” She pronounces it with certainty, and Hope is screwed.

She races down the hall as a fireball whizzes past her; and when she trips and falls, she crawls instead, doing her best to dodge the fireballs. Mom’s fireballs still don’t hit her, more by design than lack of skill, and Hope is scared stiff. She’s spent a lifetime being cocky, has been with Ma on more than one occasion when they’d fought off monsters and has taken her successes then to mean that she’s brave and strong. That she can do anything.

But she’s never been in real danger, not like this, Mom thundering after her with fire flowing free from her hands. “Where is my daughter?” she snarls. “What are you trying to accomplish here?” And then, unexpectedly, “Why did you keep asking me about Emma?” Hope feels a surge of– well,  _ hope _ – and then Mom hisses, “If this is you using me to get to her, I’ll do worse than kill you.”

She’s getting closer. Hope makes it to the end of the hallway and turns, but she’s miscalculated. There’s a final cell at the end of the hallway, the staircase before the cell, and she’d crawled right into another cell instead of to an exit. Mom is at the doorway of the cell, her dark eyes like pits of brown flame, and Hope is going to die. Hope is going to be killed by a woman she’s thought of as her  _ mother _ , and– oh, god–

“She’s in Chicago,” she chokes out. “3602 Main Street. I swear. I don’t know where else she  _ could  _ be– Ma never left this realm, not once– please, Mom,” she says, and she isn’t crying. She’s terrified and shaking and basically a little weakling compared to Mom, yeah, but at least she isn’t going to die like a sniveling little wimp–

“ _ Don’t call me Mom! _ ” Mom says in a fury, and Hope shouts right back, “ _ Then listen to me _ , she’s just with Ma–” 

Mom stares at Hope, a fireball sending shadows dancing across her face, and Hope shakes her head frantically. “I don’t know where she is,” she says, sullen in the face of death. “I don’t know anything.”

Mom takes a step forward, her fireball hand raised, and Hope refuses to squeeze her eyes shut. She will not spend her last few moments alive with her eyes closed, unaware of what is going to happen to her next. She’s a Swan, and they don’t cower when someone stronger appears. 

_ God _ , she misses Ma so much. This is going to ruin her.

And Mom bends down, her fireball so close to Hope’s face that Hope can feel the heat licking at her skin. She stares at Hope, her eyes scrutinizing, and then– abruptly, the fury in her eyes fades and is replaced with something else. 

Mom drops to her knees. The fire fades, and gentle, tender hands clasp Hope’s cheeks, cradling her face as Mom gazes at her. Her eyes are wide, stricken, and her hands are trembling. “Emma’s girl?” she whispers in wonder.

Hope bursts into tears, loud and gasping and ugly in their relief. Mom reaches for her, holds her so tightly that Hope thinks she might burst, and she sobs out, “Hope, I’m Hope–” 

  
“Hope,” Mom says brokenly. It is too dark to see more than indistinct shapes, and Hope doesn’t care, burrowing into Mom’s arms and refusing to let go. “Hope– my darling– my dear, sweet girl–” There are affectations pouring from her tongue, followed as quickly by apologies, but none of it matters anymore. The terror has faded as though it had never been there, her fear forgotten. Nothing matters but Mom, embracing her like a daughter, and Hope can feel the impossible love as it enfolds her and keeps her warm like a blanket, warm like  _ family _ , warm in the cool of this dark, empty dungeon.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just writing the epilogue now, so I can confidently say that it's going to be thirteen chapters and about 70k! Thank you SO much for the amazing reception it's gotten so far.....I can't believe y'all have stuck with me this long without a single Swan Queen interaction :') I promise it won't be long!!!!

“Henry.  _ Henry _ ,” Hope hisses into the mirror for the third time in the past twenty minutes. “Henry Mills–” 

Henry appears at last, looking ragged. “Our mother is a sociopath,” she says fervently, and Hope thinks that she means Mom at first– feels the way Mom flinches– before Henry says, “We just ran for an  _ hour _ . I think I’m dead.”

“Where  _ are _ you?” Hope demands. “We’ve been searching everywhere–” 

Henry looks confused. “I’m in the Enchanted Forest,” she says. “Ma brought me here on a surprise trip– who’s  _ we _ ? You and Aunt Zelena?” 

There is a low rumbling noise in Mom’s throat from behind Hope, and Hope shakes her head minutely and turns the mirror so Henry can see Mom. She is nestled in beside her on the couch in her office, and Mom keeps touching her, reaching out to graze her arm or hold one cheek to stare at Hope in disbelief. She has been stern–  _ this is not the way, there is a time and place, my dear _ – but she has also cancelled all of her meetings for today and has been sitting with Hope on the couch since.

She has been a little shaky since they’d come up from the dungeons, and Hope has, too. But the Mom she’d seen down there is gone with the darkness, is replaced with the gentle mother that Henry speaks about. Hope had been on edge for the first few minutes, and then it had faded in favor of impatience to make things  _ happen _ .

Henry’s eyes go wide when she sees Mom. “Uh-oh,” she says under her breath, then, “I  _ told  _ you she knew!” 

“Yeah. I wish I’d listened to you before I got locked up and nearly killed for it,” Hope says ruefully, and Mom takes in a sharp breath. Hope feels a little wave of guilt for bringing it up, because Mom has been cycling between horror and heartbreak since she’d figured it out. Hope is  _ fine _ . A little shaken, but  _ fine _ . “I can’t believe you’re in the  _ Enchanted Forest _ ,” she breathes, instantly jealous. “We barely got a few hours there on the program.” 

“I can’t believe you run with Ma and can still stand,” Henry says, making a face.

Mom purses her lips together, and then she says, “ _ Henrietta _ .” Henry gets that wide, trapped look again. “I don’t think there are words to express exactly how grounded you are.” 

Henry clears her throat. “I’ve actually written an email in which I state my case,” she says. “If you look back clearly at the set rules and expectations that you’ve set for my inter-realm travel and Storybrooke summer vacations, you’ll see that I haven’t broken a single rule. Except one, which was outside of my control. It’s all in the email. I’ll send it as soon as I’m back in a realm with phone reception.” 

“You think she’s weird, too, right?” Hope asks in a mock whisper. Mom purses her lips again, but this time Hope is pretty sure it’s to hold back a laugh. 

Henry rolls her eyes at Hope and then softens, looking pleadingly at Mom. “I didn’t want to run away or anything, Mom. I just wanted to meet Ma. This was my only chance.” 

“You could have  _ asked _ ,” Mom says, reproving. “I’m sure we could have arranged something.”

Hope scoffs. “No way. You would have told us we weren’t sisters and made us stay away forever. Hen and I are a package deal now,” she says boldly, which raises Mom’s eyebrows. “We’re not going to just pretend that none of this happened.” 

“And what happens when your mother discovers you’re gone?” Mom says, turning to Hope. “How do I explain that I’ve just been… _ keeping  _ you here?” Hope shifts guiltily. “I’m not going to keep you apart,” Mom murmurs. “I promise you that. But we need to figure out where we go from here.” She looks from Henry to Hope. “I’ll need to…to talk it out with Emma. I’m sure that she will have her own thoughts on custody and…” She closes her eyes, looking suddenly tired. “We wanted to avoid this,” she says finally. “That was why the decision became easier when a second birth mother appeared in the Wish Realm. I’ve always wondered if Emma wished her into being, too, so that we’d never have to share a daughter.” 

Hope chews on her lip, uncertain, and Mom runs her fingers through Hope’s hair. “But I don’t think a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about you, Hope,” she says quietly. “Alternate realm or no alternate realm, it’s been a struggle not to think of you as my daughter, too.”

Henry is watching through the mirror, her eyes fixed on them, and Hope says, gazing at her, “She’s my  _ sister _ .” 

“I’ll contact Snow,” Mom says at last. “I’ll let her know what’s going on.” Her eyes are suddenly stern on Henry. “For some reason, I don’t believe that anyone else is going to tell her,” she says severely.

Henry says, “You’ll  _ see  _ in the email that aside from the pirate rule, I was  _ fastidious _ about–” 

“ _The_ _pirate rule_?” Mom repeats, her voice so sharp that Hope twists away from her. She clears her throat, but her voice still sounds dangerous. “Now, why in the world would you have to break the pirate rule in order to travel with Emma?” 

Henry winces. “Ma is…dating some gross pirate,” she says reluctantly, and Hope can feel Mom going rigid behind her. Her jaw is tight when Hope turns, and her eyes are hard. “It’s not  _ serious _ ,” Henry says hastily. “Like, he just has no boundaries. He keeps insisting they’re still engag–” She stops herself as though she’s only just realized who she’s talking to. “It’s not a big deal. He just gave us a ride because the portal was down.” 

Mom nods, her eyes cool. “Helpful of him,” she says. “I’ll take it into consideration when I arrange the terms of your grounding. Now, if you both don’t mind, I’d like to go call Snow.” She disentangles from Hope and goes into a private room to the side of the office, shutting the door firmly behind her.

“Whoa,” Hope says, staring at Henry. “She  _ really  _ hates this guy.” 

“Trust me,” Henry says fervently. “You will, too.” 

“Next order of business is telling Snow everything,” Hope decides, lowering her voice. “She’s terrible with secrets, but she might work with us if she thinks there’ll be a happy ending. We need to make sure that Ma doesn’t know that Mom is coming. Otherwise, Ma will just leave you with Snow and run.”

To Hope’s surprise, Henry nods. “That sounds like a great idea,” she says brightly. “I’ll clue her in. She’ll be shocked. Stunned.” 

Her voice is suspiciously high, and Hope raises her eyebrows at Henry. “So you already told her, huh?” 

“She basically figured it out,” Henry protests. “Is it my fault your ballroom dancing is so terrible?” She claps her hands suddenly, her eyes bright. “Are we really going to engineer this reunion in the most romantic place in the  _ universe _ ? With a  _ ball  _ tomorrow?”

“Shh,” Hope hisses, because Mom has returned to the main office. Her expression is still tight, and Hope smiles tentatively at her. She doesn’t think that she’ll be forgetting the fury on Mom’s face in the dungeon anytime soon, the fairytale image of a perfect second mother discarded in an instant. But there is something more human about her now that they both aren’t pretending, and Hope wants to know her more now, wants to understand this woman who is not just a  _ literal queen _ but also very flawed.

Hope shuts the mirror and tucks it into her pocket. Mom says, “Snow suggested that I take another day to get to know you and drop in tomorrow afternoon.” Grandma thinks like Henry, apparently, and Hope struggles to arrange her face into a politely interested expression instead of glee. “I don’t think a day will be enough,” Mom admits. “There are so many years we’ve lost.” 

“I bet you could talk Ma into moving back to Storybrooke,” Hope says innocently. “She misses it. Misses you, too.” 

Mom flushes–  _ flushes! _ – and says quickly, “I doubt that very much. We didn’t leave on the best of terms.” 

“Cursing each other to hell?” Hope suggests, and Mom laughs uncomfortably.  _ Aha _ . “I don’t think Ma holds a grudge,” she says. “She has this picture of you in her nightstand from the wedding. Your hair was a little shorter back then,” she adds, and watches with delight as Mom begins to pat her hair nervously. “But you look just as beautiful now.” 

Mom scoffs. “You don’t believe that,” she says dismissively. “I’m old now.” 

“Ma has grey hairs,” Hope confides. “They blend in with her regular hair but they’re there. I tried counting them once when I was younger and Ma got so self-conscious but I think they’re pretty.” Mom has greys, too, sprinkled in her darker hair and giving it a shine. She touches them now, and there is still a flush to her cheeks. 

“Nevertheless,” Mom says, and she clears her throat. “I wouldn’t count on anyone moving anywhere. Especially if your mother is dating that pirate again.” There is a twist of disdain to her voice, and a hollowness that makes Hope ache. “I’m sure you’ll like him,” she says, her tone carefully bland. “I see how you love to explore Storybrooke. He could take you to any realm you’d like to wander.” 

“Yeah,” Hope says, making a face. “So could Storybrooke Terminal, but I’m not about to start calling it Daddy.” 

Mom lets out a startled laugh. “It’s cleaner, too,” she says under her breath. “ _ Ugh _ .” She waves a hand. “Forget him,” she says. “Let me show you Storybrooke the way that I’ve always imagined I would.” 

She takes Hope’s hand, and they descend from her office as Mom points out parts of Town Hall and then takes her to where Ma used to live, an old house that looks haunted from the outside. “Then I talked her out the window at her wedding and she never came back,” she says, looking wistful. “Oh! Let me show you the beanstalks.” 

They throw one bean and open a portal on the spot–  _ technically legal _ , Mom says, because of her diplomatic status– and they wind up in a world in which everyone communicates in song and dance, then a world where everything is black and white. “There’s one in space that I’ve always wanted to visit,” Mom says thoughtfully. “Maybe next time.” She throws a bean and they emerge in front of the diner.

Mom shows Hope a secret room beneath the cemetery and the docks at the beach, along with a fantastic running trail that has Hope itching to move. “Your mother used to love this one,” she says. “It runs along the water and then up to the highest point of Storybrooke before it dips down again. It’s a beautiful view.” 

They go to a few stores and then move through the bustle of the portal station, a few tourists snapping pictures of Mom as she walks by. Hope waves at the cameras, unbothered, and she examines a schedule to distant locations in fascination. Mom buys her a present: a map that diagrams each realm and how and where they touch, and then they head back to the house. 

“I’d better put dinner up,” Mom says, glancing at the time. “It’s late.” 

“I can help,” Hope says, and she is put on peeler duty while Mom cooks. She sneaks glances at her, the woman she’s just beginning to get to know, and she knows she won’t be satisfied with their family fracturing again. Not losing one mother for the other. Not losing her sister. This isn’t how it’s meant to be, the four of them split in half, and she refuses to accept it. 

_ Tomorrow _ . Tomorrow, everything will change.

* * *

There had been a sense of wrongness about Hope, before Regina had known that she was Hope. But there had been a familiarity, too, and now Regina can place it. Hope is Emma’s double, moves like her and talks like her and even has that dismissive eagerness that Emma used to get at her happiest.  _ None of this matters  _ and  _ you matter  _ all at once, and Regina had once gotten drunk on it, had craved it with every moment that they’d been together. 

Hope has Emma’s indelible mark on her, and Regina marvels– at how smart she is, how capable, how much she craves to see the whole world. She isn’t identical to Emma– is wider-eyed, happier, more confident than Emma had been once she’d found family– but there is something about Emma in her every step. Emma has created someone wonderful, and Regina has no idea how she’s going to broach the topic that she wants– needs– to.

_ Your daughter is stunning, can I keep her for half the time?  _ just doesn’t sound all that persuasive, she reflects, though it’s all she can think of. And the only thing that frightens her more than Emma refusing is hearing,  _ Can I keep yours? _

The girls won’t be separated. Regina knows that. It had been one thing to each take a double and raise them as unconnected, a common enough matter in these multiple realms. It’s another entirely to tear them apart now that they’ve decided that they’re sisters and have found each other. Now that Hope calls Regina  _ Mom _ and doesn’t seem to think twice about it. 

Henry has never so easily found someone her age to relate to. It had been a shock to see her in the mirror, chatting so easily with Hope and teasing and being teased. Regina can’t take them from each other. 

But that will mean that, for at least some time, Regina will be alone. The past two weeks have been a preview, not an isolated incident, and the girls will go to Emma for a portion of every year. Regina is confident that they aren’t the children they’d once been– that they can negotiate a custody arrangement that doesn’t end in fury and tears– but that is about as far as it will go. She can’t move to Chicago to be close to the girls. No city is big enough for Emma and Regina. They feel too hard, too big, too tumultuously to spend time together. It would end with…

With  _ Hook _ , Regina remembers in a rush of grief and rage, and she shakes it off. It isn’t her business who is dating Emma. It doesn’t matter if she hates him and what he’d done to Emma. There had been a time when it had–

–oh, how it had, Regina doing the buttons to Emma’s dress before the wedding, her fingers brushing against Emma’s bare skin and Emma shivering against them.  _ Do you like the dress?  _ Emma had whispered. 

_ No _ , Regina had said honestly. Every interaction from that day is seared into her mind, the way that Emma had sagged at Regina’s admission and had said,  _ I’m doing my best– _

_ I know. I know.  _ And then, helplessly,  _ What do you want me to say? _

That had been the moment, the instant when Emma had looked at her and they’d been kissing, had been lost. Emma had said fiercely between kisses,  _ I want you to tell me not to marry him. I want you to tell me that you love me–  _ and Regina had obliged, had kissed her and held her and torn the dress from her shoulders and then stopped. 

Emma had stared at her, the stirrings of devastation on her face, and someone else had possessed Regina in that moment. Someone daring, who takes so much more than she deserves, someone who had said,  _ Marry me instead _ , and Emma had nodded and kissed her and then made the window disappear so they could climb out. 

They had run to Town Hall in their disheveled dresses, giddy in their certainty that they’d finally settled on something  _ right _ , and they’d signed the paperwork, sent a picture to Snow, and driven out of town to avoid the fallout. Two weeks later, they’d been called back because of an attack, and Hook had been gone. They’d waited nearly a year to do the formal wedding– and by then they’d been on the precipice of the downhill drop– but they’d been married, and Regina can’t regret that day even now. 

She hasn’t seen Hook since Emma had left him at the altar, and she shudders to imagine him slithering back into her life now, sapping away at Emma’s fire until it is diminished. 

But she has lost the right to pass judgment on Emma’s life, to corner her and demand that she leave someone else. And she has to remind herself of that, over and over again. She will have to see Hook and grit out smiles, to keep her distance and tolerate the happy couple.

The life she’s chosen is one of longing and loss, of a love so strong that she has never recovered from it. And that is it.

* * *

Snow remembers with wistful memory when Henry and Hope had been tiny, toddlers who’d been quick with their affection and happy to run into her arms. She’d thought of both of them as grandchildren– Regina has always fitted better into her family as a daughter-in-law, rather than a stepmother, and Snow can’t separate her from that role even now. And they’d been two perfectly identical perfect children– Henry so bright and imaginative and Hope like an adorable hellion with the wit to match– and she’d spent more time traveling between their houses than she had in the Enchanted Forest. 

It had always been a struggle not to comment on their similarities. Emma had always wondered, had said–  _ she’s just started talking, is Hen _ – and then stopped, and Snow had answered the first few times and seen the way that it had sent Emma spiralling. Henry had spoken first, months before Hope. Hope had been walking by a year, and Henry had been old enough to say primly, “I want to go there,” to the adult carrying her before she’d taken her first steps. They’d been different from the start, but they’d both grown up in loving homes, and they had been thrilled to see Snow.

Now, they’ve grown past her. Henry perches on the edge of the couch, dodging Snow’s hand, and she holds up the mirror as Hope whispers rapidly. “It was such a great call to tell Mom about the ball. She’s been trying on dresses for a  _ half hour _ ,” she says. “And I told her that everything you had in your closet was hideous–” 

Henry frowns. “Hey!” 

“–So we went out shopping this morning and picked up this amazing dress. It’s got leggings under it and doesn’t have all that puffy stuff–” Hope wrinkles her nose. “I can’t believe that you’re wearing  _ that  _ and Ma still hasn’t figured it out.” 

_ That _ is a dress that Snow had hand-selected, blue and with an array of petticoats beneath it, and Henry looks like the princess she is in it. Snow tries not to be offended. Hope says, “And you can dance in that thing?” 

“I can dance in anything,” Henry says haughtily. “ _ Anyway _ . When are you getting here? Ma still doesn’t suspect a thing.” She makes a face. “She’s with  _ Hook _ . And David,” she adds as an afterthought. “They’re mingling with the early guests. Lots of people I know giving me curious looks. Ma really didn’t think this through.” 

Hope shrugs, and she looks suddenly wistful. “She’s gonna be so mad at me when she figures this out, and I don’t even care. I just want to see her again.” 

“I just want  _ them _ to see each other again,” Henry says, and the girls grin at each other and then at Snow, who beams right back at them.

There’s plenty that can go wrong here, and Snow might be a little too old to be working with a diabolical set of sort-of-twins. But Emma and Regina will be in the same place again, at last. And that’s always how the magic happens.

* * *

It has been a long, long afternoon. Emma has never been partial to balls, has put up with them to please her mother and has only tolerated this one because it’s for Hope. Hope  _ wants  _ this, the whole experience of living in the Enchanted Forest and experiencing real-life fairytales, and Emma is doing her best to give her everything she wants.

And if there were ever a place to live a fairytale, it’s here. Snow and David have redone the castle, added some modern conveniences and some landscaping that there had never been in the old days. There’s a wide, outdoor ballroom set with marble floors and beautiful flowers, and a garden in front of it where food is served. There’s even a wide pond at the center of the garden, a suspiciously chlorinated shade of blue. 

“What?” David says. “We can’t have a pool?” He grins, leading her around the pond to where Hope is sipping a drink with her legs folded beneath her. “Looks like you’re having a good time.” 

“ _ So _ good,” Hope says, smiling brightly at Emma. “I’ve met lots of new, strange people. People I’ve never seen before in my life. Want to dance?” She jumps up abruptly, curtsying and extending a hand for Emma, and Emma laughs, amazed at what Snow and David have taught her. 

“You’re like a proper lady now,” she says. “Just don’t forget how to kick ass, kid, okay? Rip the skirt and kick high.” 

She takes Hope’s hand when another hand lands on her shoulder. “There’s my lady,” Hook says easily, pulling her away from Hope. Emma hangs onto Hope’s hand, reluctant to let go, and Hope’s eyes flash as she glowers at Hook. “Fancy a dance with someone taller?” he says, winking at her as though he’s rescuing her from her daughter.

Emma has to remind herself that she is attempting tolerance, and this is part of Hook’s occasionally-dubious charm. Hope says, “I’m sure she does, but Gramps is all the way across the room. Why don’t you get him?” There is fierce dislike in her voice, and Hook sneers at her with equal distaste.

_ That  _ rankles at Emma, and she says, “That sounds like an excellent idea,” and wrenches herself away from Hook. He gives her a dark look, and she sighs, feeling miserable about the whole thing. She’d been so sure that Hook and Hope would get along. She wouldn’t have gotten herself back  _ into  _ this mess if she hadn’t been sure of it. Instead, they’ve clashed from the start, and it’s turned Hope into someone else entirely– someone changed by her program and by Hook’s presence. 

Maybe she just isn’t meant to be with someone. Maybe every person is designated just one great love of their lives, and she’d missed the boat with hers twelve years ago and is now supposed to stay alone forever.

“I’m sorry,” Hope says suddenly, looking at her with concern. Emma arranges her face into a smile, guilty at letting Hope see so much of her dismay. “I didn’t want to upset you. I just…I thought that we could dance once.” She is looking at Emma hopefully, with her eyes dimmed in disappointment, and Emma shakes her head. 

“I would love to,” she says, and she takes Hope’s hand again and leads. She hasn’t led in years– not since Regina, who had seamlessly switched between leading and following when they’d danced–  _ oh _ , Regina had loved to dance, though she’d insisted that it would ruin her image, and they’d dance sometimes in their kitchen together, music filtering from a phone on the counter and dinner half-finished on the stove. 

And Hope is  _ good _ , good as Regina had been, and dancing with her is like remembering all the old steps and following them. She’s light on her feet and she compensates for her height, and she doesn’t trip once. “You’re a natural,” Emma murmurs in wonder. “I don’t know where you get it from–” 

“Don’t you?” Hope says, and she smiles, mischief in her eyes. She glances past Emma at something behind her, and she says, “Don’t hate me, okay?” as she turns Emma and then stands back. 

Emma blinks. There are a few nobles chatting on the other side of the pond, drinking in clusters and standing at the edge of the pool. One of them shifts as someone pushes past, and Emma sees– Hope, in a light purple dress that suits her better than the one that Snow had picked for her, and her hair up in a bun, waving at Emma–

_ What?  _ She turns back, alarmed, and Hope is beside her in blue, a winning smile on her face. What…?

_ Yes _ . That’s definitely Hope across the pond, not a girl who looks like Hope. She’s staring directly at Emma, and she has a grin on her face, and she is joined by a woman in stunning lavender, a perfect match for Hope’s dress– a woman Emma knows–  _ knew _ –

Regina looks up at her, her eyes pained and still so overwhelmingly beautiful, and Emma stumbles forward without thinking, breaks into a run toward her and toward– Hope? Henrietta? Who is who?– and she launches herself directly into the pool.

Thankfully, it isn’t very deep. She hits the bottom and then pops back up, struggling to breathe, and she splashes back to the surface again, still struggling to breathe. There’s a commotion, shrieks and laughter and two identical voices saying, “Ma! Ma! Oh, my god–” and then firm hands are on her arms, tugging her out of the pond. 

Her dress is waterlogged and her carefully arranged hair is a scraggly mess. And Regina’s hands are on her, a glow of magic around them as she pulls Emma to her feet. Emma shivers, staring up at Regina and stuck for words, and Regina says, her own voice strained, “Hope. Henry. Go get some towels for your mother.”

_ Henry _ .  _ Your mother. _ Emma’s heart is pounding. She struggles to think, to understand something other than Regina’s eyes in her presence– she has little laughter lines around them now, and a silvery gleam to her dark hair that has only made her more beautiful– and she can’t.  _ Hope. Henry. _

Regina reaches out to Emma’s face and Emma stares at her, eyes wide. But Regina only brushes a tangled lock of hair out of Emma’s eyes and says, “They didn’t tell you a thing, did they?” 

Emma shakes her head, skin buzzing from the touch. Regina mutters a quiet curse. “I am going to  _ kill  _ Snow,” she murmurs, and then she takes a careful step back, putting distance between herself and Emma. “We need to talk,” she says. “About the girls.” 

_ The girls _ . Emma nods mechanically, still overwhelmed and so confused, and Regina watches her with soft, uncertain eyes. She takes a breath, and they are replaced, glossed over with a brisk, businesslike smile. “Have a seat,” she says, and she leads Emma to a chair and sits her down. “We have a lot to discuss.”

Emma blinks up at her, still shivering and a mess and the exact opposite of how she would have wanted to seem when encountering Regina again. From across the pond, she spots another wrench in that oft-daydreamed encounter.

Hook has been brought back to the pond by the commotion, and he is stalking around it, his face livid. Emma stares back at Regina, who is watching his approach with distaste, and she speaks the first word she’s said to Regina in twelve years. 

  
She says, “ _ Fuck _ .” 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your enthusiasm gives me LIFE y'all are my favorites!! the feedback has been so wonderful it made me write at double time!! This fic now has a solid thirteen chapters and is about 70k, my longest in AGES icb. Enjoy!!!!!

Emma’s head is still spinning as they settle into what should be neutral space. It’s a quiet room in the chambers closest to Snow’s, carpeted and complete with a number of cozy couches and armchairs. Emma sits in an armchair, mostly so no one can sit beside her, but Hook perches on an arm of it and glares at everyone in the room. She huddles under her towels in fresh clothes and avoids his stare, too.

Snow and David sit together, and the girls are curled on an armchair together. Regina leans back, an arm on the side of a couch, and Zelena and Mulan crowd onto the other end of her couch. Regina says, blinking, “When did you get here?” 

Zelena says, “Oh, Snow and I are the greatest of friends these days.” She nods toward Snow, looking pleased. “We like to meet and discuss all the ways that you’ve lost the best thing to ever happen to you.” She gestures to Emma significantly. Regina’s jaw works beneath her skin. 

Emma takes a moment to sneak a look at Regina.  _ God _ , she is still every bit the woman she’d been twelve years ago. She carries herself in the same way, but her face has lost its harsher lines, and she gazes at the girls with tenderness that Emma had seen only rarely when they’d been together. This is a Regina who has devoted herself entirely to love, and she is striking.

And then there are the girls. They are whispering to each other, all bright eyes and giggles, and their hands are firmly locked together. One of them– Henry, Emma thinks, because she sits so much straighter– murmurs into Hope’s ear, and both of them turn to face her.

Emma says, “So I had Henry all along?” 

“Just since Boston,” Henry says helpfully. She looks at Emma through her eyelashes. “I wanted to get to know you.” 

Zelena snorts. “And here I always thought that Henry was one good hex away from killing Emma.” 

_ What?  _ “What?” Regina says, alarmed. 

Henry shrugs. “I saved all my good hexes for the pirate.” She gives Hook a dark look, and Hope mutters something into Henry’s ear. Hook steams, and Emma winces, shrinking back into her seat. 

Regina mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “That’s my girl,” and then says, louder, “Henrietta, that’s entirely inappropriate. We don’t use magic to hurt people.” 

Hook says, “Ah, because you would never  _ dream  _ of hurting someone with magic,” a little sullenly, which means that he’d heard what Regina had muttered, too. 

Regina glares at him. “You didn’t need magic when you laid me down to be tortured,” she says coolly. “I don’t think you’re one to be dredging up anyone’s past right now.” 

“Stop,” Emma says, and they all fall silent and stare at her. “Just– stop.” She holds up a hand. “Henry. Hope.” She focuses on them, and they both look up at her guiltily. “Did you tell Regina– your…Henry’s mother,” she amends, feeling sick at the way that Hope looks wounded at that. “Did you tell her that I knew what was going on?” 

“I’ve figured out by now that you didn’t,” Regina says dryly, turning to direct an accusing glare at Snow. “I didn’t expect them to. The adult in the room, though…” 

Snow scoffs. “Oh, please. Like I could have gotten you two into the same room otherwise. And these girls deserve to be a part of the conversation we’re going to have about custody.” 

Regina says, “Why exactly is  _ anyone  _ having a conversation about custody besides Emma and the girls and me?” 

“Because the last time the two of you had a discussion about custody, you accidentally set a house on fire,” Snow shoots back. “I don’t care if twelve years have passed. I’m not letting Hope and Henry watch you two fight over them like they’re a set of towels or a sofa.” 

“We’re not being split up,” Hope says hotly. “So write that down before you start fighting. Henry and I are a package deal.” 

Emma massages her temples. “Hope, that’s just not reasonable,” she says. “You have school. Friends. An entire life in Chicago. We both do. And I’m sure that Henry has her own life, too. You can’t just jump back and forth for the rest of your life.” 

“We don’t mind,” Henry says quickly. “We can enroll in both schools and just swap whenever we’re in either place.” 

“We can move to Storybrooke,” Hope puts in. “I don’t care about my friends. All they talk about is boys, and boys suck. Except Gramps,” she says, and directs an evil eye at Hook, who bristles. “And I bet there’s  _ tons  _ of work for you in Storybrooke.” 

Snow offers, “The sheriff job is a lot more involved than it used to be. They’re always looking for a replacement for you but they’ve never been able to keep one.” 

“That’s just because Regina gives every one of them an impossible time,” Zelena says smugly. “Cowards, all of them.”

“I checked,” Hope says eagerly. “No one lives in that creepy old house where Mom says you used to live. I would even put up with staying in a haunted house–” 

Regina shakes her head. “No child of mine is living in that dark little house,” she says firmly. “And I think we need to talk about stability. I would like you both living in the same place for as long as possible. Maybe we can do half a year of each–” 

Emma feels sick, nauseous with dread. “I’m not going a half a year without my daughter,” she says.

“I don’t want to, either,” Regina says tightly. “But what else are we supposed to do?” 

“Put them back where they started!” Emma shakes her head. “This is…it’s  _ ridiculous _ . I’m happy to…to arrange sleepovers and visits but I didn’t want this. I didn’t want my daughter to have two homes.” She scrubs at her eyes. “They aren’t sisters. I know they look alike, but they aren’t–” 

When she looks up, it’s directly into two glares. Hope is defiant, Henry hurt, and Emma shrinks back into her seat and feels absolutely like the villain here. Hook says, “Oh, I’d be happy to offload both girls on you, Your Majesty. It’s the  _ least  _ I can do.” 

“Shut up,” Zelena drawls. 

Snow says, looking equally disgusted, “Why are you here, anyway?” 

Hook puffs himself up, and Emma grimaces in anticipation of something humiliating. But he has found another angle to play hero. “Well,  _ someone _ has to advocate for Emma.” 

Snow stares at him. “I’m her mother. I can do that just fine.” 

Hook scoffs. “Please. You’re not on her side. None of you are. You all let the little brats run circles around you, and Emma won’t advocate for herself, either. Not around you people.” He twists his face into a sneer. “The queen crooks a finger, and Emma comes running. She’d agree to anything just to please the lot of you. And I’m the  _ only  _ good thing to happen to her in this damned set of realms and I never had a chance.” 

“That’s very self-aware of you,” Henry says, her tone imperious. “Now be a good pirate and go get lost at sea–” 

“That’s enough, Henry.” It’s Regina who speaks, terse as she glowers at Hook. Emma shifts back into her seat, shoulders hunching over and her gaze downturned, and Regina says, “I’m not trying to force you into anything–” 

“Yeah, well, it’s just a lot, okay?” Emma says, and maybe Hook had brought it up to snipe about Regina, but he isn’t  _ wrong _ . “I just– you’re all sitting around here and maybe you’ve had a day or two– or even a few weeks– to adjust to all of this. I haven’t. I just found out that I’ve had the wrong girl with me– that I’ve been  _ played  _ all week– and now you’re trying to negotiate custody arrangements like everything is fine and it’s  _ not _ . It’s not what we agreed on. I wanted Hope to have– I was always very clear on this–” Her voice is rising, and she takes a breath. “I don’t want Hope to grow up like I did,” she says, and her voice is cracking dangerously. “I just want her to…” 

“What about what I want?” Hope says, her voice small, and Emma can’t face her. Can’t be  _ selfish _ , can’t take away something that is so important to her daughter, who would probably be happiest with Regina and Henry anyway, and she…

“I just need some air,” Emma says, and she stands up shakily and heads for the door. “I need some time to process, okay?”

She stays for just long enough to see Hook toss a triumphant smirk at the rest of the room, and she says, “Do  _ not  _ follow me, Killian.” She doesn’t want a speech about how terrible Regina is and how wonderful Hook is. She just wants a  _ break _ , a few minutes to herself before she has to confront the mess that she’s creating right now.

She walks out to the gardens, where the last of the guests are beginning to head out, and she slides out of her jeans and socks and slips her legs into the pond. The reflection that she sees is of a harried woman, one who is barely coping, and she shuts her eyes and takes a breath.

When she opens them, there is a girl standing opposite her. At first, she assumes it’s Hope, but there is something in her stance that has her reconsider. And how terrible a mother is she that she can’t tell her daughter and her daughter’s doppelganger apart? 

“Hi,” Henry says, and she lifts her dress up carefully and slides her stockings off before she sits down beside Emma. “I wanted to say sorry. I know we weren’t really fair to you.” She kicks her feet in the water. “I wasn’t trying to trick you or…or play games with you. I just wanted to know who you were.”

“I thought you wanted to kill me.” That revelation on Zelena’s part had done abrupt damage to Emma’s heart, the idea that Regina’s daughter– the girl she’d wanted so badly to know, who had been just a face in pictures for so long– might have hated her enough to try to curse her. 

Henry shrugs. “I didn’t really know what I wanted. I was mad at you for leaving Mom and me. But I guess I saw it differently. I didn’t know you didn’t see me as your daughter.” Now she sounds hurt again, and Emma wants to cry in frustration at how she’s screwed this up. 

“No, listen. I  _ wish _ …” She takes in a gulping breath. “I wish you were…” She can’t even say it, can’t push out the words, and all she can say is, “You’re so important to me, Henry,” her voice very wet.

“Oh,” Henry says, and she breathes out, too, looking relieved.

Emma swallows. “It’s just…I know that the right answer to all of this is– it pulls me out of the equation. I don’t know how I’m supposed to accept that–” 

Henry looks oddly at her. “What are you talking about?” she says. “Pull you out of the…? Ma, you’re our  _ mother _ . Or Hope’s mother, I guess,” she says, despondent. “I just don’t want to lose you.” 

Emma twists to stare at her. This is Henrietta, the girl she’s yearned for for an eternity. She has her baby picture buried in a drawer in her room, and she has followed her growth from afar. And Henry has been here, within her reach, for days, and Emma had missed it. Henry is sitting beside her now, her grave face on Emma’s, and she is  _ perfect _ , absolutely perfect, and Emma loves her like she loves everything good in her life before it is taken from her.

She reaches for Henry’s hands and clasps them in her own, and she says hoarsely, “Never just Hope’s mother. Not just…” She still can’t say the words, but Henry blinks repeatedly and squeezes her hands, her breath shallow. 

When she finally lets her go, it’s with a kiss to Emma’s cheek and a tentative smile. “When you’re ready to talk…Hope and I will be here.” She backs away from Emma, nodding to someone approaching as she slips away. 

It’ll be Regina. Emma knows that instinctively, like she always knows Regina’s presence when the other woman enters a room. She leans back, lying down along the soft grass around the pond, and she says, “I don’t want to hear about how childish I’m being.” It recalls an old fight, one she can barely remember. The fights had been a meaningless blur, the two of them stuck in their own contentiousness and too certain that they’re doomed to try to move past it.

“You’re taking all of this better than I did,” Regina comments. She doesn’t sit down like Henry had but stands, uncomfortable, staring down at Emma. 

Emma refuses to get up, to meet Regina on Regina’s terms. Maybe that is childish. She doesn’t care. “Please. It couldn’t have been worse than falling into the pool and then having a– a tantrum–” 

“I locked Hope in a dungeon and tried to kill her,” Regina says evenly. “I think a tantrum might have gone better.” 

Emma sits up. “You  _ what _ ?” Her voice is dangerous, adrenaline firing through her, and Regina sags, sitting down on a chair behind her. “If you hurt her–” 

“Henry has…many people trying to kidnap her. Or worse,” Regina clarifies. “Until I understood that I had Hope, I thought it was something far more malicious.” 

“At least you realized that you had the wrong twin,” Emma mutters, deflating. “I didn’t have a  _ clue _ . I’d noticed that something was up with Hope, but I thought that it was just…being out there in the world. And Hook showing up. I was so surprised at how much she hated him. Fairytale character with a ship that can take her anywhere? It’s Hope’s dream come true. I really thought she’d like him.” 

“She might have,” Regina says, sounding wry. “I’m afraid I ruined that one for you. I haven’t instilled Henry with much respect for pirates.”

“Imagine that.” Emma imagines Regina warning Henry off pirates, a tiny Henry drinking in every word, and her heart hurts.

Regina says, her tone abruptly formal, “So, back to Hook, then?” Emma peers up at her and sees a face that gives away nothing. “I guess you did have some regrets, after all.”

She wants to say  _ no, never, I didn’t think of him once after I was with you _ . She wants to say  _ I was just so lonely and he was there and I still think it was a mistake _ . She wants to say so many true things, so many thoughts that are real, but instead, she says, “I don’t really think it’s your business anymore.” 

“I guess not.” Regina’s voice is terse. “What is my business is the girls,” she says, and she straightens in her chair. “I don’t think it’s fair to separate them entirely. And I would like to be in Hope’s life, if you’ll allow it. I would like you to be in Henry’s. I don’t think we can undo the past few weeks, but I’d like to think that we’ve had enough years apart that we can handle being around each other like functional adults now.” 

There is condescension in Regina’s words, the kind that had once irritated Emma enough to fight, but Emma recognizes the tone today for the uncertainty that it is. “Yeah,” she says. “I can do that.” She picks herself up, moving to a chair opposite Regina’s, and they stare at each other in silence for a few minutes.

Regina says softly, “Motherhood agrees with you. You look…happy. Settled in a way that I’ve never seen you before.” 

“You, too.” There is that gentleness to Regina’s face, that affection that makes her glow even when Henry isn’t around. “You look good.” She looks breathtaking, but Emma has the sense not to say  _ that _ . 

The tension is unbearable, is a dark callback to those days after the divorce. They’d been volatile beforehand, bitter and furious and ready to battle out every last detail, but once it had been finalized, they’d both been so drained that there had been no fight left in them. They’d even gone together to begin the process of binding the realms, backing each other up through the early battles and avoiding the other’s gaze when there had been lulls.

Now, they can’t seem to look away, but no words come to Emma. Nothing casual, nothing that isn’t  _ let’s never see each other again  _ or  _ why don’t Hope and I move in with you _ ? There are no topics that are safe, not around Regina. Only the kids.

Regina says, “I was thinking about alternating weekends,” and it’s like a load off of Emma’s back. “You’re right. There’s no reason to…to rearrange their lives just because they’re demanding it. That’s not a healthy way of parenting. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She looks embarrassed, and Emma bites her lip and thinks,  _ selfish, selfish, selfish. _

“You were trying to give them everything they want,” she says. “I was being–” 

“If you call it  _ selfish _ , I’m going to light you on fire,” Regina says sharply, and Emma stares at her, still so desperately in love that it claws at her heart and makes it pound. “What is this, Neverland? We’re supposed to cut two twelve-year-olds loose and let them run their own lives now? They need their mothers. And it isn’t selfish of either of us to need them, too. They’re  _ twelve _ .” 

She clears her throat. “So we keep them in their lives during the week, and we can switch off weekends with both. They spend two days every week together and we can…I think we can rework things when there are other situations, like holidays or birthdays. If that’s okay with you.” 

“Yeah,” Emma breathes. “That’s…that’s good.” There is a nagging doubt to it, a certainty that this will become a competition that she will lose, but she pushes it aside. Regina won’t see it that way. There’s no reason for her to.

“There’s a local portal directly to Storybrooke from South Chicago Terminal,” Regina offers. “So you can send them through and you don’t have to…” She motions vaguely at herself. “Well, we won’t have to see each other,” she says finally. “That’s what we agreed on in the first place.” 

Emma shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah.” The idea of not seeing Regina again is even more painful now than it had been before. She knows what kind of yawning emptiness will accompany Regina’s departure, and she knows that she has no chance of recapturing it again. 

“Great.” Regina says it briskly, like this is a business arrangement instead of them agreeing– again– to break all contact. Maybe it is to her. Emma doesn’t know. But then she says abruptly, “Really? Hook again?” 

“I can tell this is really eating away at you,” Emma says curtly, because isn’t it just  _ wonderful _ that Regina is more bothered by who she’s dating rather than that she’s dating at all? She stands up, done with this conversation. “I’m allowed to move on, you know.”

Regina scoffs. “This isn’t  _ on _ . This is right back to where you started. He’s hundreds of years old– he isn’t going to  _ change _ , you know. He’s never going to start respecting your needs or learn the meaning of  _ no _ .” She twists her hands, her lips pursed. “I understand the desire to be in a relationship, but–” 

“Oh, come on.” Emma throws out her hands in frustration. “It’s not like I’ve been fucking half the midwest or something. I am dating. One guy. Who I do  _ like _ . For the first time in twelve years. I don’t need your judgment on this. You don’t get to judge my relationships anymore.” She’s breathing hard, angry again. “You can’t just show up twelve years in and start insisting that you understand me or him or any of this. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t get to condescend to me like this.”

Regina’s eyes flash. “Fine,” she says, and she turns away. “Enjoy your pirate. When he tears your self-esteem to shreds and makes you miserable, I’ll send a condolence card for your self-respect.” 

Emma clenches her jaw. “Please. I lost all of that years ago when I married  _ you _ .” She turns on her heel and storms toward the castle doors, done with Regina. Maybe no contact was the best method, after all. She doesn’t know what she’d been thinking, letting herself be alone with Regina. It never ends well–

“Wait.” And there it is, the small voice that she’s so attuned to that she stops in her tracks. Regina says, regretful, “I’m sorry,” and Emma turns slowly, unwilling to forgive. “You know Hook is…he’s kind of a trigger for me.” She shakes her head. “I just  _ really  _ hate that guy. Especially around you.”

Emma says through her teeth, “Yeah, well. Good thing he isn’t dating you.” 

“You couldn’t have found someone bland and boring to date?” Regina says hopefully. “Someone I could pretend to tolerate and secretly loathe for petty reasons?” 

Emma laughs through her annoyance, the sound ragged to her ears. “You mean like Robin Hood?” 

It should be a low blow, but it’s a mark of how guilty Regina must feel that she says, “Exactly like Robin Hood.” She’s standing now, fiddling with her hands over her abdomen in that way that she does when she’s uncertain. Emma watches her, her heartbeat like a thrumming in her chest.

She says, “You must have dated some other people in the past twelve years.”

“Nothing that took.” Regina shrugs dismissively. “I do get a lot of marriage proposals, though. Many eligible princes and princesses out there.” 

Emma’s stomach bottoms out. “Yeah? What do you tell them?” 

Regina’s gaze is on Emma’s, and Emma can’t look away. “I’m not interested in marrying again,” she says. “My only concern right now is the girls.” 

“Yeah.” On that, Emma can agree. “They’re really great, aren’t they? Better than I ever would have imagined.” She’d assumed that she’d at least fuck up Hope a little along the way, but Hope is  _ strong _ , smart and happy and full of life, and Emma doesn’t know how she’d managed it.

“Of course they’re perfect. They’re  _ ours _ .” Regina smiles that warm smile again, fierce and loving and all the things that Emma has craved for a dozen long years, and  _ god _ , Emma wants to kiss her right now. It is torture to be this close to her without being able to touch her, to hold her, to fall into her embrace and never leave it again. 

But that isn’t who they are anymore, and Emma says, “Damned right they are,” and stands there in silly, happy silence, basking in Regina’s presence and mourning the distance between them.

* * *

“Look at them,” Henry says, her eyes shining. “I can’t believe it. Look at the way that they–” She gestures out over the balcony, down into the garden where Mom and Ma are talking. “I think we might actually have a chance.” 

“Of course we have a chance,” Hope says. The statement had been sheer bravado before, but now, she’s beginning to believe it. Ma keeps twisting her hands and smiling, and Mom has the softest eyes when she looks at Ma. They’re getting along– they  _ spark _ , like the love just can’t be contained by their bodies alone– and they walk together, a safe distance apart as they talk. 

But they’re  _ talking _ . Ma is talking about her job, if Hope is reading her gestures right. She’s doing the hydra story– her hands wild as she shows its height– and Mom is laughing, her eyes clear and unguarded. “You think we can get them back together before we get split up again?”

“I think that we need to,” Henry says seriously. “If they aren’t together here, they’ll find excuses not to see each other. Mom is terrified of putting her heart out there again.” 

Hope eyes Henry. “Yeah? She talks to you about her heartbreak?” Sometimes, she suspects that Henry is editorializing just a bit. Hope might be a superstar liar– and it’s a talent that has taken her far– but Henry is a storyteller, and Hope has noticed that Henry has a tendency to rope people into her stories.

Henry gives her an aggrieved look. “I can  _ tell _ ,” she says. “Mom used to go on dates and then come home and complain to Snow about the stupidest things. Like  _ she kept clicking her teeth together  _ or  _ he didn’t seem interested in Henry  _ or  _ her second head ate half my fries _ . At some point, it was obvious that Mom didn’t actually want to like anyone she dated. Because she’s only ever loved Ma,  _ obviously _ .” 

Hope tries to remember the plot of the old movies about Mom. “What about that stable boy when she was younger?” 

Henry whacks her on the head with a book. “ _ Only ever Ma _ .”

“Ow. Okay.” Hope pinches Henry in the arm until Henry whines, and then she peers down at Mom and Ma. They’ve stopped walking for a minute, are turned toward the doors to the castle, and Hope squints to see what has caught their attention. They aren’t smiling anymore, though Ma has a strained look on her face, like her lips are twisted upward.

She’s mad at Ma for what she’d said earlier, for the implication that Henry isn’t Hope’s sister and that there’s a reason to keep them apart. But that doesn’t mean that she wants Ma to  _ suffer _ . She just wants to be a family. Like they’ve always been supposed to.

And the single biggest obstacle to that right now has shoved his way into Mom and Ma’s reunion, situating himself between them and slipping an arm around Ma possessively. Hook says something, and Mom’s eyes flash. His body language is aggressive, argumentative, and Mom’s fingers dig into her hands like she’s doing her best to keep from retaliating. Ma says something, pulling away from Hook, but Hook tightens his grip on Ma and holds her in place.

“Oh, hell, no,” Hope says in a low voice, rage building in her fists.

Henry mutters a hex under her breath. Hope watches in admiration. The spell catches Hook at the bottom of his pant legs, a little green snake-shaped hex that he doesn’t seem to notice at first. “This is one of Aunt Zelena’s best,” Henry whispers. “She says it’s even better than having natural magic.”

The snake slithers up his pant leg as he speaks more, angrier as he gestures at Mom, and Mom’s lips form a word that is unmistakably  _ Emma– _

Hook’s voice is loud enough to hear now. “–no claim on her!” he’s snarling. “She’s  _ mine _ –” 

“She isn’t a piece of meat, you unwashed bit of excrement!” Mom snaps back. “Let  _ go _ –” 

Ma is speaking now, her voice very low, and Hook looks livid. He twitches a bit as the snake makes it past the back of his knee and then, in a nearly-visible moment, bites him in the butt. “Ha!” Henry says, delighted. 

Hook twists around, grabbing at his butt and then screaming, and Ma turns on  _ Mom _ , looking weary but accusing. Mom shakes her head, and Ma waves her hand to try to stop the snake, blasting Hook in the butt with magical flames. Now he’s yelling, batting at the fire with useless hands, and Ma says, voice urgent enough that it carries up to Hope, “ _ Do  _ something!”

Mom lifts a lazy hand and propels Hook into the middle of the pool, putting out the flames. Ma gives her a dark look and hurries to the edge of the pool to retrieve Hook, though Hope notes that she only stands at the edge and waits, rather than hauling him out herself. So that’s kind of a win. 

Mom disappears from the garden in a burst of magic, though, which is a definite loss; and reappears directly behind them, which is even more of a loss. “Hello, girls,” she says. “I think it might be time for some consequences, don’t you?” 

Hope says, “ _ Crazy  _ what Auntie Z did to Hook, huh?” 

Henry looks horrified. “Hope! You can’t just throw Aunt Zelena under the bus!” She looks shamefaced, but not convincingly. “It was me. I didn’t like the way he was touching Ma.” 

“I don’t like the way he ever touches Ma,” Hope mutters. Mom stares at them, a muscle in her jaw ticking, and Hope offers her a weak smile. “I mean, were we supposed to just put up with that?” 

Mom thaws, just a little bit. “If your Ma does, then you do, too. Understood?” She sounds unconvinced of her own statement, and she repeats it. “Emma makes her own decisions, and none of us have any right to interfere.” 

Hope says, “That’s  _ bull _ .”

Mom’s eyebrows rise. Henry gives Hope a severe look. “What Hope means,” she cuts in, “Is that, respectfully, that’s bull.”  _ Atta girl _ .

“Respectfully,” Mom echoes. Her eyebrows are somewhere around her hairline by now. “We are going to discuss this together,” she says. “Tomorrow morning. I’m scheduling a formal meeting with the four of us and only the four of us. We will talk about expectations moving forward.”

Hope looks up at Mom with her eyes beseeching, the puppy-dog look that has tamed even the most cynical of Ma’s moods. “Can’t we make it tomorrow night? I’ve been dreaming of seeing the Enchanted Forest for my whole  _ life _ . I just want to get to explore a little bit before you…” She takes a deep, sad breath. “Before you pull us apart again,” she says, blinking rapidly until her eyes are wet.

Mom’s lips part, and she takes a breath. “Of course,” she says, and she smiles tentatively at Hope. “I’d be happy to show you around. This is where I grew up, you know.” 

Henry, who is both not-an-adult and has the exact same face as Hope, is less swayed. “What are you up to?” she whispers to Hope. 

“Trust me,” Hope mutters back. She smiles back at Mom. “That sounds really cool,” she says, and she means it. “I’m going to bed now,” she decides. “Henry, show me where we’re staying.” 

Henry says, “It was a single bed.”

“You can sleep on the floor,” Hope says graciously. 

Henry scoffs. “ _ You  _ can sleep on the floor. I have dibs.” They nudge each other as they make a quick getaway, bumping along the balcony and stopping only when Henry throws out a hand in front of Hope and holds her finger to her lips. “Look,” she whispers.

Mom is still standing at the balcony, staring down at the gardens. Ma is sitting with Hook down below, and Hook has wrapped an arm around Ma, the hook at the end of it scraping loosely against the fabric of her shirt. She looks uneasy but doesn’t pull away, and she seems to be reassuring him of something. Hope wrinkles her nose in disgust and looks back at Mom. 

Mom is watching Ma, and there is quiet devastation in her eyes, such breathtakingly bare emotion that it leaves Hope speechless.

Not for long, though. She  _ is  _ Hope Swan, and she is not often speechless. “Don’t worry,” she says in a whisper. “Tomorrow night, they won’t even remember that he exists.” 

Henry casts her a wary look. “Hope, we can’t engineer a homicide on a trip with Mom. The publicity would be terrible.” 

“No homicide,” Hope promises. “Just…what’s the most romantic place in the Enchanted Forest?” She waggles her eyebrows, and a slow grin settles on Henry’s face.

  
Their mothers won’t stand a  _ chance _ .


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I probably look forward to update days more than y'all, and it's because you've been SO kind!! thank you for your enthusiasm and your comments and your kofis and kudos and everything, I am LOVING getting to share this with you!!
> 
> Just a quick trigger warning for Hook near the end– no actual violence but definitely the threat and vibe of it.

Regina had done her best to sound casual when she’d offered Hope a tour of the Enchanted Forest. More time with the girls is more time with the girls, and Regina isn’t going to take that for granted. But there is very little that she can say as they ride through the villages.  _ This is a town that I razed to the ground in my search for Snow White _ isn’t appropriate material for a ride through the kingdom. Or  _ this is where the king brought me before I was forced to marry him _ .

Her happy memories are overwhelmingly in Storybrooke, and this is her hell. But she smiles and pushes down the dark thoughts, wary of frightening Hope any more than she had in the dungeons. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she says. “This is the village where your grandmother first met Ruby. They fled it shortly after, and Ruby discovered that she was a werewolf.” 

Hope says, turning and nearly falling off her horse, “You know a  _ werewolf _ ?” 

Henry lifts her chin, sounding very smug. “She’s one of my dearest friends.” 

Hope wrinkles her nose. “I can’t believe you made that uncool. She’s probably, like, eighty if she’s friends with Grandma.” 

“She could still kick your butt,” Henry says, unfazed. Regina marvels at how they’d so easily slipped into sister mode, bickering and inseparable. Zelena hadn’t gotten there until at least the third murder attempt. “What are your friends going to do? Cancel you on TikTok?” 

Hope shudders. “That’s so much worse than fighting a werewolf.” She cranes her neck. “Everything here is either really beautiful or doing the whole back-to-nature aesthetic. You must have had the  _ most  _ romantic times with Ma here.” 

Regina raises her eyebrows. Hope isn’t subtle when it comes to prodding, but Regina has very little to share. “Not really,” she says. “We were rarely here at the same time. There was the time when Emma traveled back in time and I caught her trespassing and nearly executed her–” 

She flushes, remembering an alarming amount about that night. She’d been charmed by the strange visitor, though Emma had been wearing another face, and she’d taken a willing Emma to her bedchambers. She hadn’t understood half of what had escaped Emma’s mouth that night, and only when they’d been married had Emma admitted that it had been her.  _ It was comforting, in a weird way _ , she’d said thoughtfully.  _ Knowing that even the Evil Queen wanted to fuck me _ – And Regina had said  _ even?  _ and they’d had a few perfect nights after that.

“And,” she says, pushing that determinedly from her mind. “There was a year when we’d been cursed here from Storybrooke.” 

Henry nods knowingly. “The missing year.” 

Hope frowns. “Wait, I know this story. Peter Pan cursed Grandma and Ma and everyone so that they’d die. There was a sorceress who reversed the original curse and saved everyone by taking them to the Enchanted Forest, right?” She stops a beat, and then says, “ _ Oh!  _ You were the sorceress!”

“There was another bit to undoing the curse that I didn’t explain,” Regina remembers, a chill settling over her. She doesn’t know if she’d ever admitted it to Emma. “I had to say goodbye to the thing I loved most.” 

“Ma,” Henry says, her eyes wide. There is too much dreaminess in her gaze, too much softness at the story, and Regina shifts uncomfortably. Emma won’t appreciate her telling stories like this or talking about their relationship. But it’s Regina’s story, too, and she has kept it suppressed for so long. “But Ma came with you.” 

Regina nods somberly. “I had to keep my distance from her,” she says quietly. “I attached myself to someone else. Your mother had…there were a slew of men around her at all times that year. It wasn’t hard to stay away.” The girls are staring at her, wide-eyed and confused, and Regina thinks better of saying what she’d like to about Hook and Neal. “We were almost never alone. And by the end of it, she was with Hook.” 

Hope looks disgusted. “ _ Him _ ,” she spits out, and Regina thinks, with measured pride,  _ That’s my girl _ , and then feels guilty about it.

Henry mutters something and Hope jumps as though she’s been jabbed hard by something intangible. “Eye on the prize, Swan,” Henry says, and she turns to Regina. “You must have had some time together, though.”

“Never enough to force us back into Storybrooke,” Regina reminds her. “We didn’t wind up back there until a new curse made it habitable again.” She remembers those days, on edge around Emma and terrified to tell her why. They’d explained away the true love’s kiss that had broken the curse.  _ Of course she’d loved me. She had no idea who I was.  _ Or  _ she’s the savior. True love had nothing to do with it. _

Eventually, they’d both begun to believe it. But it would have been a much harder sell to explain why, in the Enchanted Forest, their survival had hinged on Regina letting Emma go. “There was a place out by the water. A beautiful little nook between mountains, somewhere just past your grandmother’s palace. I used to go there for a break from Snow.” She gestures vaguely behind them, toward the towering mountains over the castle. “Emma found it a couple of months into the year. We’d meet there and savor the quiet together.” 

They would sit out over the water, a little too close, and it had always felt illicit, even when it hadn’t been. Regina would feel the curse unraveling, and Emma would look at her with spots of color high on her cheeks. They had been the only moments of the missing year that had been bearable at all.

“Can we see it?” Henry asks, her voice pitched suspiciously low. “It sounds like a really pretty place.” 

Regina eyes her suspiciously. “Maybe another time,” she says. “Hope wants to see magical locations, not nice views. Why don’t we take a shortcut to Rumplestiltskin’s old castle?” She snaps a finger, and they disappear and reappear up north, the girls forgetting the spot in the mountains in favor of a mysterious castle.

They’re up to  _ something _ , but Regina is confident that she’s diverted them for now. With a mental pat on her back, she leads them into the castle.

* * *

It’s getting easier to tell the girls apart, Emma decides with some possibly misplaced confidence. For one thing, Hope is the only person in this castle who can keep up with her when she’s running, except for Mulan, who is keeping clear of their entire mess. Henry does her best, but she keeps stopping, breathing hard and half-supporting herself against trees. 

“We should really give Henry some leeway,” Hope says magnanimously. “It’s been a rough route for her.” She peers around. “You really used to run this way?” 

Emma is left with the uneasy feeling, not unfamiliar, that she’s playing directly into the twins’ hands. “Years ago,” she says. “It’s a good route, but there’s a bit more uphill than we get at home.” 

Hope shrugs. “It’s cool. I like it.” She’d been the one to ask to run with Emma today, still hyped up from whatever treasure hunt they’d had with Regina in the Dark Castle, and Emma had just been pathetically glad to be included. There is a still-present fear that she isn’t the mother that the girls would choose, if it came down to it, and that she has so little to offer them. She wants to give them the world. But what does she have but an apartment that only fits two and some great stories about her glory days?

Emma hasn’t offered any stories about this route. None of them will make sense to the girls. The route’s midpoint is a perfect little spot in the mountains where she’d spent a good part of the missing year, pining over Regina while sitting right beside her. There had been a distance between them, brought on by pressures from Snow and Hook and Neal and by Robin Hood’s lingering presence. It had been so easy for them to fall away from each other, and Regina had never made an overture that year.

Still, the closest thing to solace that she’d felt that year had been in the mountains, staring down at the water with her thigh pressed to Regina’s.

Henry breaks her out of her reverie, still panting, and she says, “Can we find somewhere to sit for a little while? I need a break.” 

“You have no endurance,” Hope scolds her. “You start too fast and burn out quickly. I’m going to have to train you.” 

“For what? I can take down anything that can outrun you,” Henry points out smartly, and she offers Hope a surprisingly Regina-esque smirk. “No assassin is going to be turned off by someone running really fast.” 

Hope scoffs. “Depends on which direction I’m running.” 

Emma quashes a smile. “Come on, kids. I’ll show you a great place.” It feels very personal, bringing them to see her secret spot with Regina, but there’s no one in the world more fitting. She ducks under a low-hanging branch, leading the girls through the underbrush to a rocky spot at the valley of two mountains. 

“Wow,” Henry breathes, her eyes wide. The view is exactly as magnificent as Emma remembers it, a continuous slope down to grass and water. The sun hits the water at the perfect angle, refracting in greens and blues and reds like shining iridescence, and the world seems alight with possibility right here, just as it always had with Regina.

“This is gorgeous,” Hope says, sitting down right where Regina used to sit. Her hair is a shade lighter than Regina’s, her skin a shade darker, and she has terrible posture; but Emma still feels a little quiver of wistfulness at the sight of someone in their spot. Hope is joined by Henry, identical from behind, and she rests her head against Henry’s shoulder and stares out into the light of the afternoon sun. “I want to live somewhere like this. Forever.” 

“You think you can talk Jade into moving to the Enchanted Forest?” Henry says laughingly, and Hope elbows her.

“Jade as in our neighbor Jade?” Emma says, very interested. This is a new development– or one she hasn’t been aware of until now. “What about Jade?”

Hope glowers at Henry. “You’re  _ such  _ a Snow White,” she hisses.

Henry looks aghast. “How  _ dare  _ you–” 

Emma clears her throat. Both girls twist around to stare at her with identical questioning looks. “Uh,” Emma says.

“Come sit,” Henry says, and the girls squeeze over to let Emma sit between them. They snuggle in close, their heads on her shoulders and their arms resting behind her back, and Emma is just beginning to relax when Henry says, “Tell us about when you first fell in love with Mom.” 

They want to know. Of course they want to know, now that the floodgates are open and all of her truths are out. She can’t avoid the topic anymore, much as she might want to. “It wasn’t like I just…woke up one day and was in love,” she admits. “Or love at first sight, I guess. It might have been hate at first sight,” she says, reflecting. “We  _ really  _ hated each other at first. But also liked each other.” 

“Ew,” Hope says, and she says in a stage whisper, “That means they were hooking up. Not a mental image I ever needed.” 

Henry beams at her, unbothered by any of the mental images that are haunting Hope. “And you fell in love,” she marvels. “You had true love’s kiss–” 

“Regina did,” Emma reminds her. “I wasn’t all that conscious at the time. And I was too busy dealing with the fallout of the curse to think about what that kiss meant. It wasn’t the kind of fairytale love story you see in the movies. I don’t even know if I realized that I was in love with your mom until…I don’t know. Maybe when we fought after Marian came back. Maybe at the moment of the sacrifice.” 

But she remembers another time, long after all of that, when it had been simpler. Her love had always been one of grief and fear, of mourning what she’d lost after it had been taken from her. She had loved Regina with a desperate kind of love for so long that it had begun to feel like the norm, like the only love they’d ever have would be the kind that was fading away.

Except– then she’d made a wish. And she’d been thrown into another realm in an instant, into a world where she’d never been the savior. Regina had come for her, had crossed realms to find her, and she’d tried everything to force Emma to emerge again and remember that she’d been the savior. It hadn’t been until Rumple had double-crossed Regina and had sent an army to kill her that Emma had remembered herself. She’d defined herself as a savior, yes, but only as Regina’s savior. 

After that, it had been impossible to deny the depths of her feelings for Regina. It had been like floating in a vast sea, swept up in wave after wave and getting lost in the undertow. She’d look at Regina and her heart would leap, would become whole again. Regina had become her entire world, and she’d said yes to Hook’s proposal because she’d been terrified at missing another chance like she’d missed all the ones she’d had with Regina.

“It was probably the moment of the sacrifice,” Emma says, and she slides an arm around each of her daughters and tells them stories they’ve never heard before about the Dark One.

* * *

Snow, after a number of aborted attempts to take charge of the entire custody discussion, has settled for an attempt to take charge of the venue of the discussion. “Somewhere quiet,” she’s reassured Regina. “Without interruptions. David has invited Hook out for a night at the tavern.” She smiles, that dangerous smile that means that Snow is  _ interfering _ . “So you can have a nice dinner as a family.” 

“Stop,” Regina says warningly, but there is one point that she’s insistent on. “And I want two carriages. One for Emma and Hope and one for Henry and me.” The girls need to be split up for at least the beginning of this conversation. Together, they’re bordering on unstoppable, and they won’t take this discussion well if they can egg each other on. 

Henry doesn’t seem bothered by it. She even grins that bright-eyed grin when Regina ducks into the carriage with her and snuggles up beside her. “Just the two of us,” she says placidly, and Regina takes that as promising until she adds, “About to be the four of us.” 

“Henry…” 

Henry shrugs. “Come on, Mom,” she says. “I know you’ve always wanted a bigger family.  _ And  _ with Ma. You can’t tell me that you’re not on our side with this.” 

“There are no sides,” Regina says. She can feel a headache coming on. “Henry, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t care about Emma very much. And I love Hope just as much as you do. But this just isn’t our life. Your mother is– she’s seeing someone else. And we just aren’t there anymore.” 

Henry makes a face. Regina says hastily, “That doesn’t mean that you won’t see them. Emma and I were talking about…we were thinking about alternating weekends.” 

“ _ Alternating weekends _ ?” Henry echoes, aghast. “So…what? I only see Ma once every other week? For  _ two days _ ?”

“Henry–”

“And Hope!” Henry stares up at her, the tears already in her eyes. “Mom, she isn’t a  _ friend _ . I can’t just…live an entire life without her. I want a  _ family _ . I want us to all be together. Like it should be.” 

The carriage is slowing down, and Regina resists the urge to look out the curtained window and turns back to Henry. “There is no  _ how it should be _ , darling.” She squeezes her arm around Henry’s shoulders. “I just don’t see another option. When you’re older–” 

“No! Not when I’m older!” It’s surprisingly uncontrolled for Henry, who thinks that every interaction is a potential public relations nightmare. She takes a breath. “I want my  _ sister _ . I want my  _ moms _ .”

“I’m sorry,” Regina whispers. Disappointing Henry kills her, feels like being ripped to shreds. “I’m just–” 

The carriage stops. Henry sits in silence, staring out into nothingness, and Regina says gently, “We can sit here for a little while.” 

“You should go ahead,” Henry mutters. “I need to think.” 

Regina gives her space. She steps out of the carriage, squinting around in the dark, and then she sees them: a little row of strung lights, an electric anachronism in the Enchanted Forest, and a tiny generator that’s keeping them running. And the lights illuminate a spot that is suspiciously familiar.

She twists around, and the carriage takes off, disappearing into the night. Behind it follows a second carriage, and Emma is standing in front of where that one had been, looking bewildered. 

Regina clears her throat. “Hope also needed ‘time to think?’” she asks, hooking her fingers into quotes. 

Emma snorts. “Hope told me that she wasn’t leaving the carriage until I reconsidered our plans. She did not take them well. Though leaving us in the middle of the woods is diabolical, even for them.” 

“Not in the middle of the woods,” Regina murmurs, and she waits as Emma looks around, until recognition dawns. “I don’t know how they found this place. They’d been full of questions about it this morning, but I put them off.” 

“Yeah,” Emma says, and she shakes her head. “About that…Hope asked for a run this afternoon and I took them here for a break. But I didn’t tell them anything about it–”

“I did. They played us.” Regina lets out a breath. “They set this up for us.” She ventures to say, “I think our daughters might be playing matchmaker.” 

Emma pinches the bridge of her nose. “Those two…I’m beginning to empathize with the old bad guys who had to take us both on in Storybrooke. If we were half as impossible as them–” She taps her shoes against the ground, at once uncomfortable. “Killian’s going to  _ kill _ me. He tried to make me promise I wouldn’t be alone with you again–” 

“What?” Regina’s voice is dangerously low, and Emma shrugs unhappily. 

“I mean, he has a point. The last time we were alone together when I was dating him, I eloped with you. I get where he’s coming from, even if I told him that he was being a controlling dick.” She wets her lips, staring at the string of lights. They’re orange, wound invitingly around the trees outside their spot, and Regina feels a pang when she looks at them.

It’s strange, being back here. Regina had made plans once, after they’d been married in the whirlwind of love that had left little space for romance. She’d imagined a second proposal, a proper one, the two of them in this place overlooking where Emma’s parents had gotten engaged. Maybe there would have been sparkling lights. It’s uncanny, the way that the girls can think exactly like she does.

When she looks back at Emma, the other woman is staring at her, her eyes struck by an unknowable emotion, and Regina can’t stop herself from taking a step forward. “I don’t trust myself alone with you, either,” Emma whispers, and Regina stumbles back.

“This is– this is ridiculous,” she says finally. “We aren’t letting Henry and Hope dictate who we spend time with. You’re right. We shouldn’t be alone like this–” There is too much between them, a forbidden line tugging them together until they’re helpless but to follow. “Let’s just go. We have magic.” 

But Emma is already following the lights to their nook in the valley, the glow of them like a beacon, and Regina walks after her.

In the valley itself is a blanket set out across the rocks, and an MP3 player lying beside two place settings. A bottle of wine is at the center of the blanket. There are two covered dishes at the center of the blanket, and a note tucked under one. 

“Sorry for running you ragged for the past week,” Regina reads aloud. It’s in Henry’s familiar scrawl. “We thought you deserved a break.” Then, beneath it, Hope has written, “PS: Hen picked the music. I just wanted it to be  _ the 1  _ on repeat.” 

Emma presses play on the MP3 player, and quiet classical music wafts across the valley. The moon hits the water below at the perfect angle, fragmenting into beautiful stars across the sea, and Emma whispers, “It’s so beautiful.” 

If this were a movie, Regina would say,  _ yes, it is _ , while staring at Emma instead. If this were a movie, Emma would turn around and see her watching and there would be a pregnant pause after which they’d kiss, passionately and tearfully, and the world would right itself again.

But instead, Regina feels a wave of guilt at how they’re dancing with fire, and she murmurs, “Emma.” Emma turns around, her eyes bright enough to drown in, like the sea below with stars shining within them. “Emma, we can’t be here.” 

“Yeah.” Emma heaves a sigh, crouching down for a moment to lift the first dish. “We have to make it clear that we’re not going to allow them to play these games with us–” She stops abruptly, staring at the food beneath the plate. “Deep-dish pizza,” she says wonderingly. “How did they get a pizza guy to deliver this here?” 

“PortalEats, probably,” Regina says, and she kneels to open the second. It’s a bowl of fries, a little scoop of ketchup beside it, and she lets out a strangled laugh. “This must be Henry. Only Henry would set up something this elaborately romantic.” 

“No way,” Emma objects. “The pizza has Hope written all over it.” She shakes her head. “They make us a classy dinner picnic and serve the best pizza in Chicago? What are these kids?” 

And Regina can’t explain it, the wash of emotion that follows. They’re just so  _ absurd _ , their two little girls, obnoxious and bossy and, yes– downright diabolical, and yet they’re perfect. Regina is in love, hopelessly in love with her family, all three of them, and it’s never hit her with quite as much force as it does right now. 

“Hey.” Emma shifts to sit beside her, and Regina’s heart wrenches. “I know. They’re everything.” Her voice falls, her eyes bright, and she reaches out to touch Regina’s cheek. Her fingers graze Regina’s skin, and Regina swallows, caught in Emma’s gaze. “We did something good, yeah?” 

She’s so close, and she’s still touching Regina, her eyes glazing over as though she’s forgotten herself. She runs her fingers over Regina’s cheek, traces the shell of her ear, the curve of her jaw, and Regina can’t breathe. “God, you’re so beautiful,” Emma says, her own breath hitching. “It’s like…every time I see you, all I can think about is–” 

“Emma,” Regina manages. Her voice is like gravel, and her stomach is a knot in her abdomen, incapacitating her. “Emma, we’re not…” But she wants her, wants her more than she’s wanted anything in her life. This is the impossible truth of them, why they’ve only known how to fight and how to love. They’re caught together in a rush of desire, of affection and attraction that make them lethal to each other.

It has never ended well, but it takes a lengthy struggle before Regina can remind herself of that. “Emma,” she sighs, and she shifts back, away from her.

Emma shakes her head, clearing it visibly, and she drops her hand. “This is–  _ no _ ,” she says firmly. “We have to be able to talk to each other without fighting or…well, you know.” She sits on the other side of the blanket, her hands set firmly onto her lap. “And I think that we can handle this without doing anything we’ll regret.” 

“Inspiring,” Regina says, relieved to hear how steady her voice sounds. “How much of your decision to stay had to do with the pizza?” 

“It’s really good pizza, Regina,” Emma says, her eyes dancing, and she cuts out a piece for herself and lifts it up to eat. It is a drippy mess of cheese and sauce, and Regina winces at how appetizing it looks. She’s going to ruin her gown. “Come on. Try it.” 

Regina inches closer to the pizza, smoothing a hand over her gown. It’s a purple number, long and silky, and it hugs her body just a bit more than it has to. Had she put it on with Emma in mind? Maybe just a little. Emma’s eyes are somewhere around the dip of her neck, and Regina cuts out a piece and does her best to transfer it to her plate without dripping. 

The dish is enchanted to stay warm, and the pizza is gooey and cheesy and is definitely going to hurt Regina’s stomach in a few hours. She eats some anyway for the delight on Emma’s face, and then she monopolizes the fries. “Oh,” she says in an almost-moan. “Oh, these are  _ good _ .” 

“You and potatoes.” Emma laughs. “Remember that time I decided to make you an anniversary dinner? I spent hours on that souffle thing and popped a potato into the microwave as a side and you acted like it was the best thing you’d ever tasted.” 

“It was up there.” She raises her eyebrows at Emma without thinking, and she’s pleased when Emma flushes. “I was going to surprise you with reservations to that new restaurant in Portland that had been all the rage back then. And then I came home and saw the kitchen and canceled the reservations.” 

Emma says in a dangerous voice, “ _ What _ .” 

Regina rolls her eyes. “Please. I’d take a sunken souffle in our kitchen over any trendy restaurant,” she says without thinking, and she sees Emma pale and realizes what she’s said. “Back then, I mean–” 

“Yeah.” But Regina has shattered the mood, the light memories of a simpler time, and she eats her fries unhappily and gets lost in old recollections. 

Abruptly, she says, “You know, I can’t remember a single fight that we had. Isn’t that ridiculous? All I remember is hating myself after every one.” 

Emma uncorks the wine and pours herself a glass. Regina follows suit. Emma says quietly, “All I remember is the way you looked when I would say something that hurt you. I don’t remember the fights, either.” 

They watch each other uneasily, drinking their wine and feeling the tension rising between them. “I don’t think the fights really mattered,” Regina says finally. “They were just…we were younger then. We jumped into a marriage too soon. And neither of us was convinced that we deserved a happy ending. It took its toll.” 

“So much fighting,” Emma murmurs. “Do you remember– right before the divorce–?” 

The night before it would be finalized, when they’d been fighting bitterly and had both been miserable. Regina remembers it. They’d been separated by then, living in different houses, and Regina had wandered through the streets like she’d been sleepwalking until she’d made it to Emma’s house. Emma had silently let her in, and Regina had backed her against a wall and kissed her senseless.

They’d awakened in Emma’s bed the next morning, and they’d stared at each other for a long time before they’d gone their separate ways to court. Regina had been wearing Emma’s clothing for the proceedings, and she doesn’t think she’d ever given them back. “We were a mess,” she pronounces now, and means it fervently. “I think…I think we should have tried being friends first.”

She wonders now if this will be the moment when Emma says,  _ let’s be friends then,  _ if this could be the bright start to something new. A second try, a life of peace, happiness so close that she can taste it. She craves it, is terrified of it, and she can’t look away.

Emma smiles, a little tremulously. “That’s bullshit,” she says. “We would never have been friends.”

* * *

Emma’s had half a bottle of the wine when there’s the sound of a carriage up the road and their ride returns. The fries are gone, the pizza almost finished, and Emma is beginning to feel hazy with food and wine. 

“Thanks for abandoning us here,” she says cheerfully to an unapologetic driver, ducking into the carriage. Regina is just behind her, a steadying hand on her side, and Emma’s skin burns at Regina’s touch. It always has, like it knows exactly who owns her, and the wine makes it a little hotter, a little more impossible to resist. 

The carriage is empty, the girls having had the sense to be scarce after their last scheme. Emma sits a safe distance from Regina on one seat, her body still very warm. “It was nice of them to give us a ride back,” she says. “Would have been easier to just teleport back to the castle, but…” 

Regina snorts. “Where’s the romance in that? Henry would never allow it.” The carriage bumps, dislodging Regina from her spot and sliding her down against Emma. Emma catches her, her breathing shallow again, and Regina stares at her with lidded eyes–

_ Fuck _ , Emma wants to kiss her. The wine is making the desire more urgent, and Regina’s been wearing that slinky purple dress for so long that Emma can’t think about anything but what’s underneath it. It’s been so many years since they’d been sweat-slicked against each other, skin pressed to skin and learning and relearning every curve and cry. Emma has spent an eternity dreaming of Regina and has forgotten how intoxicating it is to  _ have _ her, to be in her presence and to think of nothing but her.

Regina’s hand brushes against Emma’s cheek, and Emma shivers. Regina is half in her embrace, her eyes lost in Emma’s, and Emma wants to–  _ needs  _ to– 

The carriage jolts again and she remembers that she’s in a relationship. That she’d left him once for Regina and she  _ can’t  _ do this, can’t be the terrible person she’d been last time. She’s pushed aside that realization for most of the night, has let this be  _ what the twins want  _ instead of  _ what I want _ and has excused dinner over it, but she can’t carelessly ditch Hook again.

She’d written him letters last time, had sent a slew of underwhelming apologies into the mail and Regina had humored her by getting them to Hook. He’d sent back– of all things– a  _ dick pic _ , which had only confirmed to her that she’d made the right choice. Now, she remembers the letters guiltily, outside of the rush of marriage and love that had consumed her when she’d eloped. She’s gotten herself into this mess. And she isn’t going to kill the relationship again and hurt Hook.

Regina isn’t even interested. She wants to be  _ friends _ , which just sounds like an exercise in torture. How self-destructive can Emma  _ get _ , that she’d give in to this attraction between them and torpedo another relationship? She sighs, frustrated with herself, and gingerly sets Regina back down on her seat. “Sorry. Carriage rides aren’t usually this bumpy.” 

“I wouldn’t put it past Snow to make this one worse for this exact reason,” Regina says ruefully, running a hand through her hair. “Also, have you noticed the second carriage following us? I think we may have had some spies at dinner.” 

Emma runs a self-conscious hand through her own hair. “Great. I hope they  _ coveted  _ the pizza. I’m telling them we finished it all.” 

Regina laughs lightly, her eyes gentle as she watches Emma. Her eyes have always been gentle around Emma, like a hypnotic  _ almost  _ that has haunted Emma since, and Emma turns away and stares out the window. 

They exit the carriage together, Emma guiding Regina down the step, and only then does she turn and see Hook at the castle entrance, his face thunderous. The girls’ carriage comes to a stop behind theirs, and Emma says hastily, “I have to go,” before Hook starts yelling in front of them.

She hurries to him, nearly runs from Regina, and she teleports them both to a spot on the other side of the castle, in the room that Snow has loaned Hook as his guest bedroom. It is on the opposite side of the castle as hers and possesses a narrow bed identical to the one in Emma’s room, so small that it will only allow one person on it, which is very pointed and very unnecessary. “The girls set us up,” Emma says rapidly before Hook can speak. “I know you didn’t want me around Regina–” 

“Damn right I don’t want you around Regina,” Hook snarls, and he slams his hand against a dresser. “So you went on a ride with her? Did you fuck her?” 

Emma feels a shiver of disgust, a shiver of fear. “Stop.” 

“You won’t even fuck me,” Hook says furiously. “And you’re going off on nighttime trysts with Her Majesty.  _ Again _ .” He slams his hand against the dresser again. “I thought you were past this. The simpering after Regina, the  _ I have to see if Regina’s okay  _ every time she so much as stubbed a toe, the obsession that never  _ stops _ –” 

“We ate dinner. We talked about the kids.” Emma holds up a hand. “She suggested we be friends, and I said no. What do you want me to say?” 

Hook’s eyes are dark, and Emma is taken back fourteen years to arguments when she’d been afraid, when she’d lost herself in memories of bad foster homes and furious fathers. There had been other reasons beyond Regina that she’d been relieved not to marry Hook, but they’d been forgotten over the passage of time and the one enduring reason for her decision. Now, they return in a rush. “Look,” she says tiredly. “I’m not willing to let Henry go. And that means that Regina is always going to be in my life, as the other mother to my kids. I know that you don’t like that–” 

“I have every right not to like that,” Hook growls. “After what you did to me–” 

And there’s the guilt again, lurking like a pit in her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve told you that a hundred times. I’m  _ sorry _ . I should have talked to you beforehand about…about my doubts.” 

“You didn’t have  _ doubts _ ,” Hook scoffs. “You had a pretty piece of ass throwing herself at you.” 

Emma snaps, just a little. “Do  _ not  _ call the  _ mother of my children _ a  _ piece of ass _ ,” she says through her clenched jaw. 

Hook takes a step forward, backing her against the wall, and she sees the flash of his hook and thinks– he’s going to cut her throat, he’s going to cut her shirt open, he’s going to do something that she’ll never come back from, and she’s going to have to _ kill  _ him–

But the hook impales in the wall beside her, digging into the paneled wood that Snow has put into a number of rooms in the castle, and Emma flinches and glares at Hook. This has gone sour faster than she’d imagined it might. She’s no stranger to conflict in a relationship, obviously, but she’d thought…

Well, she doesn’t know what she’d thought. Through gritted teeth, she says, “Step away from me.” 

“She isn’t going to love you again, you know,” Hook says, unmoving. “She’s gone off and become a queen again, and she has thousands of suitors courting her.” His breath is hot on her face, and she refuses to move, to give him the pleasure of knowing that he’s gotten to her. “And  _ she’s  _ kept her figure,” he says, eyeing Emma up and down. “She hasn’t let herself go.” 

Now he’s just trying to hurt her, and it works. “Go to hell,” she says, and  _ no _ , yet again, this isn’t salvageable.

“The mother of your children.” Hook scoffs. “You think that they’ll want to hole up in that little dump in the Land Without Magic with you when they have  _ her _ ? All the realms at their grasp? You were sure that little Hope was going to want to leave even before she found her sister.” He smiles, slow and predatory, and every one of his arguments hits with precision. “She’s going to take them away from you, just like she took Storybrooke and Snow and David and everything else you’ve ever shared. And you’ll be alone again.” 

“You’re wrong,” Emma says weakly. “You’re so wrong and you’ve crossed so many lines.” She’s  _ done _ , done again, and they are past the days when she can handwave his tantrums as the road to reformation. And yet, he still knows her frighteningly well, knows every weakness and uses each one without fail.

Hook goes on, unrelenting. “Except for me,” he says, and his voice is soft now, reassuring. Emma remembers it like a muscle memory, the calm that had followed each storm, the caress of affection that had felt like love once. “I’m the only one who’s ever loved you, Emma Swan. I have built my entire  _ life  _ around you, and I waited fourteen years to be with you again. And it’s why I won’t go now.” He pulls his hook from the wall, stroking it down her cheek, and she can’t decide if she’s angry or relieved or just very, very sad.

Hook is being an  _ ass _ , but the worst part about Hook being an ass is that he’s so rarely wrong. He plays every insecurity she has like a violin, eking out new notes until it’s the only tune in her mind. And maybe he’s right about Regina, about Hope and Henry. What does she have to offer them? 

Emma says, a last line of defense, “You want to persuade me that you love me? Don’t call my kids  _ brats _ . I don’t care if you were defending me.” 

“I like those little tykes,” Hook muses, and Emma stares at him, unconvinced. “Cute. A handful each, but they’ve grown on me.” He tilts his head, gentle again. “I could take you with them, anywhere in the universe. No portal hopping or touristing, only swashbuckling adventure. We could make a good team, you and I.”

Emma doesn’t move. It’s a reason to stay, offered from someone who has been nothing but loathed by the girls since their first meeting. And it’s a reprieve from what she’s known, with a sinking feeling, will happen. The girls might care about her– might even want to spend time with her– but she can’t offer the world to them. Weekends with Emma will rapidly become dull as they get a little older, as they see a little more of what they can experience. Hope will make excuses to stay with Regina for longer until Emma is the occasional mother, the glancing presence in lives rich in magic.

With the Jolly Roger, she might stand a chance. She might be able to give two girls meant for so much more than Emma’s little apartment everything that they want. They will always resent him for not being Regina, but there’s little she can do about  _ that _ . And she  _ does  _ make a good team with Hook, she knows that. She will never concede to marrying him again, but he had been a friend once, hadn’t he? And he really hasn’t raged like this since they’d started dating agan. She hasn’t thought of what it might do to him to lose her to Regina again, and she’s sidestepped his feelings since the ball. 

Hook says, “I lost my temper,” an apology. “Can’t blame a man for feeling possessive over his love, can you?” 

  
Emma takes a breath, exhaling away the dark feelings that had settled in her during their argument. “I guess not,” she says, and she puts her palm against his skin. It doesn’t make her skin buzz, and it isn’t soft and smooth and feminine– isn’t  _ Regina’s _ , the touch of it still haunting her– but it is steady, and it will have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! My [tip jar](https://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/coffee), if you're so inclined, and I'd love it if you could kudos and/or drop a comment! :)


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